Spabbit

MAC / Macbook / PC Keyboard issues

A while back I migrated wholesale from Windows to Mac. As I'm old I'v been using M$ from the days of DOS 3.3, and being in tech, supporting the products for the last 30 years. No more! M$ shot themselves in the electronic foot for good and bad by the move from a software company to an advertising company selling us all as the product.

Now for the transition. MAC OS (as of Tahoe) isn't perfect, and required some tweaks and additional pieces of software to get it workable.

The simplest thing was getting the KB & mouse to behave in a reasonable manner.

For the mouse, to fix the weird apple acceleration and other artefacts to a useable level (especially important for gaming), go find and use Linear Mouse, you may need to mess with the settings a bit, but it will work!
Link here https://linearmouse.app/en/

For the KB... using the Mac as a Mac (MacBook air/pro/neo), it's OK as you're using the native KB, however I like my original KB, and I have a couple of them - the 8BitDo Retro style.

  1. In Mac settings ensure you're using the keyboard - PC, e.g. British - PC, just setting British won't make it work.

  2. If you fucked-up the keyboard and the keys don't match, then there are two things to do - this one first; forget the keyboard by deleting the file com.apple.keyboardtype.plist

 sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist

Rebooting, the Mac will attempt to re-identify the KB. If you're European or British, it's an ISO keyboard.

  1. Keybindings. Home / Ins / Del / don't work correctly in Apple-World, as Macs don't have those keys natively, so results when pressing them from muscle-memory are frustrating and annoying.

Make a file called DefaultKeyBinding.dict in your user folder, example:

/Users/JoeBloggs/Library/Keybindings

(you may need to create the folder first!)

Remember, Mac = UNIX = Case Sensitive file system.

If you're in finder, and can't see the Library folder in your User folder, hit Shift-Command-G, and start typing, it'll be found :)

The content of the file should be as below. When done, save and reboot, and thus your external PC keyboard will work with sensible keybinds as listed below... If you don't like any of the key binds, delete them from the file... simples!

{
   /* This goes in the user folder /Users/mike/Library/KeyBindings */
    "\UF729"   = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";                         /* Home */
    "\UF72B"   = "moveToEndOfLine:";                               /* End */
    "^\UF729"  = "moveToBeginningOfDocument:";                     /* Ctrl + Home */
    "^\UF72B"  = "moveToEndOfDocument:";                           /* Ctrl + End */
    "$\UF729"  = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";           /* Shift + Home */
    "$\UF72B"  = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";             /* Shift + End */
    "^$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfDocumentAndModifySelection:";   /* Shift + Ctrl + Home */
    "^$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfDocumentAndModifySelection:";         /* Shift + Ctrl + End */
    "^\UF702"  = "moveWordLeft:";                                  /* Ctrl + Left Arrow */
    "^\UF703"  = "moveWordRight:";                                 /* Ctrl + Right Arrow */
    "^$\UF702" = "moveWordLeftAndModifySelection:";                /* Shift + Ctrl + Left Arrow */
    "^$\UF703" = "moveWordRightAndModifySelection:";               /* Shift + Ctrl + Right Arrow */
    "^\u007F"  = "deleteWordBackward:";                            /* Ctrl + Backspace */
    "^\uF728"  = "deleteWordForward:";                             /* Ctrl + Delete */
    "$\UF746"  = "paste:";                                         /* Shift + Insert */
}

F2

Are you one of the people, previously in the windows world, where F2 rename in Explorer was a thing for you? Do you miss this on your new shiny Mac? Yes? This is for you!

This is a shortcut to Rename for FINDER only.

  1. Apple Symbol > System Settings
  2. Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts (button)
  3. Scroll down > App Shortcuts
  4. Click the + symbol
  5. Select Finder from the Applications selection
  6. Give it a title "Rename"
  7. Put your cursor in the box and hit F2 on the KB
  8. Click on Done!

... Thus the hand of Spabbit has provided your much missed F2 in Finder :)