Cherry is a german company, the survivor of the old mechanical keyboards era, so naturally, their design became the most popular one. Once the patent expired a lot of manufacturers started to produce switches using the same design, but with different characteristics. Some people still regard Cherry switches as the best ones, but there are so many options out there right now that it’s just not true for anyone. Thankfully, hearing about Cherry design, Cherry-compatible or anything like that is a good thing in the mechanical keyboard context because it assures compatibility, something you definitely desire if you’re buying parts yourself to build or upgrade a mech.

Yes, and No, that’s the short answer. The “most universal” keycaps are the Cherry style ones, which will fit a switch stem with a cross. There are also plenty of custom switches and keycaps out there, which are not interchangeable or compatible with Cherry switches and Cherry mounts. If you want to pair a Cherry-compatible keycap with a Cherry mechanical switch you also need to account for keyboard layout which impacts the bigger keys: Space bar, Enter, Shift, and so on, as these must also match. Example: a 7U spacebar won’t fit on a 6.25U layout because it will extend over adjacent keys.

Mechanical keycap profiles determine as you would imagine the shape and height of each key and key row. The most popular profiles are Cherry (shocker…), OEM, SA, DSA, and XDA, but there are plenty of subtle variations out there. Changing your keyboard to a different profile may alter the typing experience considerably.