Apple system keys

I miss my Apple system keys (if that’s what they are called). E.g. fn+F4 is launchpad.
Does anyone have the definitions for these keys?
How about layout suggestions?

Did I miss something painfully obvious?

Thanks,
John

Hmmm… I haven’t seen those yet, but also interested…

On a Mac, if you just go to your System Preferences–>Keyboard–>Shortcuts, you can set your own unique shortcut for whatever you are looking for. I recommend you use Hyper (ie, Shift+Ctrl+Cmd+Opt) plus anything. Then you can add those shortcuts to your keyboard layout or create a macro to activate them.

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Thanks.
I was hoping to switch back and forth with my Magic keyboard while I’m coming up to speed on the M01.
I can get the keycodes for the f keys on the Magic keyboard (F4 is 10006, for instance), but not sure what I’d do with that.

I think you are doing more work than you have to. Unless I’m mistaken, your Apple keyboard should continue to be able to, for instance, open Launchpad with the Apple-specifc keys no matter what you set the shortcut to be in your system preferences. I think that the Apple keyboards aren’t by default sending the function codes you are describing (you have to hold the Fn key to do that).

So just go check in your preferences what shortcut is assigned to open Launchpad. If one already exists, all you have to do is put that into your keyboard layout wherever you want it.

It depends on the setting. I have mine set to use the Apple functions when fn is not pressed. When I press fn, the keys act as normal f keys.
Here’s a dump from Karabiner-EventViewer:

eventType:key_down        code:0x10006    name:launchpad       misc:
eventType:key_up          code:0x10006    name:launchpad       misc:
eventType:key_down        code:0x10002    name:fn              misc:
eventType:key_down        code:0x3d       name:f4              misc:
eventType:key_up          code:0x3d       name:f4              misc:
eventType:key_up          code:0x10002    name:fn              misc:

You can see the first event is my pressing the launchpad key (without fn), later, you can see I held fn, tapped the same key, and the f4 key code was sent.

Edit: also, there isn’t a key assigned in prefs, it’s apparently baked into macOS.

image

Thanks,
John

Any insight @algernon?
Thanks

I’d have to research what the apple system keys are. I never had a mac keyboard, and the only mac I have access to at the moment is a Mac Mini, so no Apple keyboard there, either.

I’ll try to figure out what they are, but Mac isn’t my strong side. In the meantime, you may want to open an issue against Kaleidoscope on GitHub (easier to track and remember).

I’m a tad busy for a few more days (lots of stuff happening IRL that demand my attention), but I’ll work through my backlog as soon as I can spend my usual amount of time on keyboard things.

I think the Apple keyboards have a custom keycode for those keys and I’m not sure what it would take to implement those. Most installs of MacOS have the shortcuts mapped to the matching F keys so that it will activate whether they are flipped or not.

I would agree with @JDH that the best solution here is probably to set your own hotkeys in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and then map your Keyboardio to those. It should not interfere with the Apple keyboard itself.

If I would have thought about it before I left work I would have tried this out with one of our Apple keyboards there. If you haven’t had the chance to try by Monday I’d be happy to report back then.

I defined the Any key as F19, and assigned that to laundpad in preferences. It works,and the Apple keyboard still works.

Not sure why the Apple keyboard can generate a 0x10006, but keycodes are defined as uint_8 in kaleidoscope.

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