Help! My keymap was deleted!

[tzarc]

As has been noted in the last two breaking changes cycles (Aug '23 & Nov '23) user keymaps are actively being removed from QMK Firmware's mainline repository in an attempt to improve the maintainability of QMK Firmware. As part of that decision, any keymap code that is not a default, via, or vendor keymap is in the process of being removed.

A tag has been created -- user-keymaps-still-present -- which includes all user keymaps before any deletions occurred. If you wish to recover your keymap and move it to your own fork of QMK Firmware, this is where you'd retrieve it.

Alternatively, to simplify user keymap compilation workflows, official support for External Userspace has been added. We have a channel dedicated to this (https://discord.com/channels/440868230475677696/1146201809224994887) and there is active development going on to improve this feature. This functionality allows you to keep your keymaps in a separate personal repository that doesn't include QMK Firmware, helping simplify any update procedure. It's currently in beta, but is functional enough for almost all usecases related to keymap compilation. Do note that it does not support external keyboards -- if you're building your own handwired build or equivalent, you'll still need to work within your QMK Firmware fork.

For vendors, if you've had a vendor-supported keymap deleted, get in touch with the QMK Collaborators on Discord -- we're happy to restore it for you. Restoration into the main QMK Firmware repository will not be possible for non-vendor keymaps.