I would like to have some way to specify that when I am focused on Spotify.app and I press the j key that it will translate into a ↓ key and be sent to the app. I would like this because I like vim style navigation but Spotify does not support remapping keyboard shortcuts.
How to map keyboard keys to other keyboard keys in an app specific manner
keybindingskeyboard
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I've developed a terminal for iOS (it is not released, is intended as a base for other projects) and I have tried for hours to see any kind of event or modifier when meta keys are used on an external keyboard. The only way to get these events is to use private APIs and if you do that you can't get your app on the store. I have filed an issue (Apple rdar 10283552) and hopefully this will change in a future release.
So the problem is not your keyboard, it is iOS. I think you have found the best solution with key chords, unless you want to use one of the better apps like Prompt, which gives you "soft" meta keys on the screen - but the whole point is to keep your hands on the external keyboard, I know.
I don't know for sure if Prompt keeps those meta keys visible when a BT keyboard is connected - it can be done in code - if it did maybe soft metas would be better than nothing.
Remapping a Windows keyboard so that the key positions match a standard Mac keyboard is pretty easy.
Just open Keyboard Preferences, and click the Modifier Keys… button in the Keyboard tab.
This lets you change the behaviour of the keys on each attached keyboard (make sure you select your external one from the top drop-down menu).
To turn the Windows standard Ctrl⊞WinAlt configuration to the Mac standard controloptioncommand ⌘, just change the Option and Command drop downs so they have the opposite entries (i.e. Option performs Command and Command performs Option).
If you want to change the physical keys, most of the premium mechanical keyboards use Cherry switches that have interchangeable key caps. You can get Mac specific modifier key sets from places like DAS Keyboard and WASD Keyboards. If you want to go nuts, you can even get a fully customized key cap set in a style similar to Apple's keyboards, as this guy did (looks pretty nice IMO, but I'm sure it's costly).
Best Answer
@iGameRam's suggestion of KeyRemap4MacBook ended up working for me. I selected KeyRemap4MacBook because I am already using it to remap keys for me system wide. To do this I had to read the reference manual.
From the reference manual I found that there is a
private.xmlfile that enables me to add more remapping values to KeyRemap4MacBook. By going to the KeyRemap4MacBook pref pane, going to the "Misc & Uninstall" tab and selecting "Open private.xml" I was able to open the file.I had to add two elements to my
private.xml. The first was:This is because KeyRemap4MacBook does not ship with an app definition for Spotify. It does ship with many others. I need the app definition so my keyboard keybindings only apply for Spotify and are not system wide.
The second element I added was:
This is the actual definition of the key bindings. The
<identifier>tag is supposed to be unique for every key mapping. The manual suggests prefixing the identifier withprivate.. The<only>tag has to match an appname defined in theprivate.xmlor shipped with KeyRemap4MacBook.The
<autogen>tags are supposed to contain the mappings. The manual has many examples on what kind of mappings that can be created. The two I have map the J and K keys to the Down and Up keys respectively.Once the file has been saved, I just needed to press the "ReloadXML" button and then my mapping appeared as an option in the menu.
After selecting it everything worked as I wanted.