Force keyboard re-identification in Catalina MacOS

catalinakeyboard

I switched from a Logitech keyboard to a Mac external keyboard on my macbook pro with Catalina MacOS. Every time I hit capitol M it types MZ. It could be the case that the keyboard is malfunctioning, but before I replace it I thought of trying to re-identify the keyboard and see if it helps.

MacOS user guide says this:

  1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click
    Keyboard.
  2. Click Change Keyboard Type, then follow the onscreen
    instructions.

However I could not find Change Keyboard Type in that interface – see screenshot below. I also tried this sudo command but it didn't work.

How I could force a keyboard re-identification?

enter image description here

Best Answer

I had the issue where I could not find Change Keyboard Type in that interface after migrating to new Mac with Big Sur and wanted to force keyboard re-identification.

Deleting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist (as suggested above by JMY1000) and rebooting solved it. After the reboot the system ran the keyboard setup again and I could set the correct type.

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