Set up Keychron C3 Pro RGB Keyboard

This is a short howto on setting up a Keychron C3 Pro RGB in Linux. You'll need sudo rights, but that's about all.

Unfortunately, I needed to use a Windows machine to upgrade my firmware first, using the instructions at launcher.keychron.com, but I believe current models are shipping with the newer firmware pre-installed (c3_pro_ansi_rgb_v1.0.1_2403081755). If not, you can download the .bin file here. 

# First, you need to know what groups you're currently
# in, this example was run on a Rocky Linux 9.4 host.
groups
# steve wheel dialout
 
# What I'm interested in here is the wheel group, it's what
# gives me sudo on this machine, and I'd like anybody that has 
# sudo to be able to edit the keyboard layout with usevia.app
 
# Create an empty file if it doesn't already exist
sudo touch /etc/udev/rules.d/99-vial.rules
 
# Add the rules below to that file, note the group is wheel.
echo 'KERNEL=="hidraw*", SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="3434", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0350", MODE="0660", GROUP="wheel", TAG+="uaccess", TAG+="udev-acl"' \
 | sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/99-vial.rules > /dev/null
 
# Make the rules take effect
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

Download the .json.zip file from here or from the Keychron website, unzip it somewhere and keep track of the file c3_pro_ansi_rgb_v1.0.0_20240125.json as you'll need it soon.

  1. Open up the web page at https://usevia.app/
  2. Click on 'Settings' (The gear icon, top center)
  3. Click on the 'Show Design Tab' slider to move it to the right
  4. Click on the 'Design' tab (Paintbrush icon)
  5. Click on 'Load Draft Definitions' button, a File Browser window should open
  6. Navigate to wherever you extracted the c3_pro_ans….json file to, select it, and open it.
  7. A new window should open listing your Keyboard for some reason, for me it shows up as 'Keychron Keychron C3 Pro', no idea why the name is there twice
  8. Click on your keyboard name, then 'Connect' at the bottom of that window, you should be golden

Set up your keeb however you want, and don't forget the macroee goodness!