MacBook – How to make function keys work for an external keyboard on MBP with Touch Bar

keyboardmacbook protouch-bar

I'm completely flustered by not being able to use the single key shortcuts in Chrome's debugger

F8 = play
F10 = step
etc.

I have to reach over to the laptop and press and hold the Fn key and then, with my other hand, I can use the F keys on my standard keyboard.

I tried changing the keyboard settings to force the Touch Bar to display function keys for Chrome.app but this did not solve the problem as it only solved it for the built-in keyboard, not my external keyboard.

I have Karabiner but it's limited in my version (10.12.x Sierra). I also can't do a macro of one key to multiple.

Is there any way for me to achieve this?

Best Answer

In karabiner-elements Preferences, in the Function Keys tab, there is an option at the bottom, "Use all F-keys as standard function keys".

Karabiner-Elements will also allow you to bind a key that exists on your external keyboard to Fn, like Caps Lock or PrtSc under the Simple Modifications tab.

You can combine these two, so you can still adjust brightness with your F-keys by holding down the combination of Fn+F1/Fn+F2, where Fn is whatever key you mapped it to.

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MacOS – Function keys and Enter key on built-in keyboard of 13″ rMBP thesteriously remapped. How to fix or reset to default

First, boot into single user mode/verbose mode. If the problem persists, its hardware.

The hardware problem can be as simple as a loose connector between keyboard and logic board. I had experience with a malfunctioning trackpad on my no-retina MBP 13'. The cause was that the connector came loose and only some lines of signals were fed into the system. I don't see how the connector would come loose without external cause; I opened up/modded my MBP many many times. However, I can say that there is free space between the connector and the bottom chassis of the laptop, enough for it to become loose.

I know retina-ones are different from my MBP in config, so you should look up ifixit to see if that's the case for you. Plus, you might have warranty concerns etc that stop you from opening up the machine.

MacOS – Use caps-lock to lock fn key or other way to lock fn key

To address the last point in your post, "Can I toggle the option in the Keyboard preference pane with a script?", here is the AppleScript code that will toggle the state of the "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" checkbox on the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard System Preferences.

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set the current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
    reveal anchor "keyboardTab" of pane id "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
end tell

quit application "System Preferences"

Note: This code was tested under OS X 10.8.5. It may need to be adjusted for later versions of OS X.

You could use this code in an AppleScript application that could be placed in the Dock or in an Automator Service Workflow that could be assigned a Keyboard Shortcut, etc. If you need help with that, just ask.

Best Answer

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MacOS – Use caps-lock to lock fn key or other way to lock fn key

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