Remap the function keys on the wireless keyboard
I just bought a new Apple wireless keyboard, and got annoyed that F4 was hard-wired to the Dashboard, so here's what I did to change it. Warning! Driver hacking follows! Remember to back up the driver first, in order to avoid a possible major malfunction of the keyboard.In Terminal, do:sudo vi /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHIDKeyboard.kextGo to line 349, which is where the function key definitions reside. I haven't fully decoded the system yet, but I think that it works like this: Key,Function. For example:0x0007003a,0xff0100210x0007003a is the F1 key without the "fn" key pressed, and 0xff010021 is the code to decrease the screen's brightness. Based on that, here's my ugly hack. I changed 0x0007003d to 0x0007004d -- this apparently made the system think I pressed fn-F4 or something. Either way, it works, and it shows the desktop as I wanted it to.Save the file and reload the ...
published on Tuesday, the 30. September 2008, macosxhints
Change 'edit current cell' shortcut in Excel
If you switch between Excel for the PC and Excel on the Mac (either 2004 or 2008), you probably know that there are many differences in the keyboard shortcuts between the two platforms. To make switching back and forth more seamless, you can use Excel's ability (or the system's) to remap keyboard shortcuts on the Mac to match those on the PC (or vice versa, of course). However, there's an undocumented but often-used keyboard shortcut that seems immune to these solutions -- the keyboard shortcut for "edit in cell." On a PC, you can edit the current cell's contents by pressing F2; on a Mac, it's Control-U (F2 copies the cell's contents). I much prefer the simplicity of F2 over Control-U, however, it doesn't seem possible to customize this shortcut. This "edit in cell" command doesn't appear in any of Excel's menus, nor does it appear in the list of all commands in the keyboard shortcuts section of Excel's customization dialog. Google searching didn't turn up any simple soluti...
published on Tuesday, the 15. July 2008, macosxhints
VMware Fusion 1.1.1 brings more than a dozen fixes
VMware today unveiled Fusion 1.1.1, an update to its virtualization client, adding in numerous features and bug fixes. Fusion now remaps hotkeys between the Mac and the virtual machine, equating Command-C with Control-C in the VM, for example. This remapping works for the following keys: Z, C, V, X, P, A, and F. On European keyboards, the Enter key...
published on Monday, the 28. January 2008, macintosh-news-network
10.5: Set different modifier keys for external keyboards
I use a PC keyboard to go with my MacBook at home, which is fine until I need to use a keyboard shortcut that starts with Command. Then I sometimes get pretty confused figuring out just where the Command key is. In Leopard, I can set different Modifier Keys for different keyboards, so I remap ALT to Command and WIN to Option on my PC keyboard. Here's how: Plug in a external keyboard to your Mac Go to System Preferences and open the Keyboard & Mouse pane Click Modifier Keys under the Keyboard tab Select External Keyboard, and change the modifier keys End of confusion!
published on Friday, the 26. October 2007, macosxhints
Convert a laptop's Enter key into Forward Delete
As a PC user who recently switched to using a Mac laptop, I've had to learn all the differences in the keyboard keys and shortcuts. The addition of the Command key, lack of a true Delete (forward delete) key, the Option key, etc. One in particular sent me on the hunt for a solution: not having a single button for forward delete for some reason seemed really annoying to me (despite being able to use Fn-Backspace to do this). After looking around for a while, I discovered a freeware program called DoubleCommand that will do exactly this, and much more. DoubleCommand is a key mapping (or more appropriately, key REmapping) program originally designed for old PowerBooks that was created to add a secomd Command key, hence the name DoubleCommand. It's very powerful and user-friendly; check it out to add lots of nice tweaks. [robg adds: We mentioned DoubleCommand way back in October of 2001, but with the n...
published on Monday, the 29. January 2007, macosxhints
AltGr in Parallels Desktop on a laptop Mac
This hint may only apply to users with a non-US keyboard. In Sweden on a Windows machine, you press AltGr+2 to get the @-sign. A Mac keyboard of course has no AltGr key, but I thought one could use the key combination Control-Alt instead. In many cases you can do that. However, Office 2003 (at least the Swedish version) doesn't recognize Control-Alt as AltGr, though many other programs do. Of course this is problem when working in Outlook 2003. The solution: remap keys in Windows. I tried many remapping utilities, but many didn't do the job. Maybe because the utilities are designed for US keyboards. I found one free utility that do work: KeyTweak. Download and install (in Windows in Parallels, obviously). I used the 'Half Teach Mode' to remap the right Command key to 'Right Alt' (AltGr). Then use the Apply button to let KeyTweak write the remapping into Windows' Registry. Since it is a registry change, it means that the rem...
published on Wednesday, the 20. September 2006, macosxhints
10.4: Remapping keys in Mac OS X 10.4
The Mac OS X 10.4 Keyboard & Mouse preference pane provides a way to remap certain keys. However, the interface doesn?t expose the full functionality -? a common problem with Apple software. Note that this guide assumes you?using the bash shell. Read on to learn... What keys can be remapped without the use of any third?party software? How do I remap those keys? How do I remap the Caps Lock key to the Escape key? What keys can be remapped without the use of any third?party software? (The following list shows the key name on the left, and that key's value on the right.) None ? ?1 Caps Lock ? 0 Shift (Left) ? 1 Control (Left) ? 2 Option (Left) ? 3 Command (Left) ? 4 Keypad 0 ? 5 Help ? 6 Shift (Rig...
published on Tuesday, the 29. August 2006, macosxhints
Add right-click to XP on MacBook and MacBook Pro
If you've used Bootcamp to install XP on your MacBook or MacBook Pro, you might have been frustrated by not being able to right-click. While shift + f10 will usually work, you might be looking for something more familiar. Apple Mouse Utility will let you use Control-click to right click. Simply place it in your Startup folder, and call it with /s, so that it launches silently on startup.Also, KeyTweak will allow you to remap your Windows keyboard, useful for reassigning modifiers like Control-C to the Mac's Command-C, etc.[robg adds: Don't worry, we're not turning into Win XP Hints, despite old April 1st announcements to that effect. But if there are general tips that will help Mac users make their time in Windows more productive, such as this pointer to a coup...
published on Wednesday, the 31. May 2006, macosxhints
Install an enhanced SMART monitoring package
Unfortunately, I've recently had reason to want to check the SMART status of my PowerBook's internal disk. Apple's Disk Utility will tell you a simple pass/fail summary of the SMART status of the disk, but it won't go into any detail, show you logs, or details of particular errors. What's more, I believe that it only looks at certain classes of errors to determing the Verified of Failing status, and so if the drive is experiencing errors, such as its firmware silently remapping sectors, it's still shown as A-OK. I decided to go hunting for some more useful utilities, and first discovered SMARTReporter which displays an icon in the menu bar showing you a visual status of the disk. This utility, however, appears to use the same criteria as Disk Utility for determining as simple pass/fail status, so in this particular case isn't that useful to me. It is handy in a more general sense as it can monitor multiple disks, and upon a SMART failure it can do any combination of: pop up an alert...
published on Friday, the 19. May 2006, macosxhints