diff --git a/.gitmodules b/.gitmodules
index 79b7e19485..7bee617505 100644
--- a/.gitmodules
+++ b/.gitmodules
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 [submodule "keycodemapdb"]
-	path = src/keycodemapdb
+	path = subprojects/keycodemapdb
 	url = https://gitlab.com/keycodemap/keycodemapdb.git
diff --git a/meson.build b/meson.build
index f7f31a278d..de087666f5 100644
--- a/meson.build
+++ b/meson.build
@@ -2028,6 +2028,7 @@ runutf8 = [ 'LC_ALL=', 'LANG=C', 'LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8' ]
 
 top_inc_dir = include_directories('.')
 
+keycodemapdb = subproject('keycodemapdb')
 
 # include remaining subdirs
 
diff --git a/src/util/meson.build b/src/util/meson.build
index c6b1294f24..c2175f1098 100644
--- a/src/util/meson.build
+++ b/src/util/meson.build
@@ -138,8 +138,8 @@ keyname_list = [
   'win32',
 ]
 
-keymap_gen_prog = find_program('keymap-gen', dirs: [meson.project_source_root() / 'src' / 'keycodemapdb' / 'tools' ])
-keymap_src_file = '@0@/src/keycodemapdb/data/keymaps.csv'.format(meson.project_source_root())
+keymap_gen_prog = find_program('keymap-gen')
+keymap_src_file = keycodemapdb.get_variable('keymaps_csv')
 
 foreach name : keycode_list
   keycode_gen_sources += custom_target(
diff --git a/src/keycodemapdb b/subprojects/keycodemapdb
similarity index 100%
rename from src/keycodemapdb
rename to subprojects/keycodemapdb