I tried several combinations, but I have not found any way so far to mute audio (playing in any application, system wide) using a normal PC-Keyboard (Cherry G80) connected to my Mac Book Pro (2011).
On the built-in keyboard of the MacBook Pro this is simply done by pressing F10 (or Fn-F10, depending on the Pref settings).
I would like to get the Fn+F10 functionality working on the external keyboard. Apparently Apple keyboards have an explicit Fn key and there is seems to work.
What I tried is:
- I remapped the Windows Menu key (Application key) to Fn using KeyRemap4MacBook
- I made it so that F10 does not show the current Application Window, so F10 is free
- Still, when I press F10 or Fn+F10 on the extrenal keyboard, nothing happens
To me it seems that the audio mute functionality is pretty low level in the keyboard stack.
Any thoughts welcome.
Best Answer
Two options: (1) using Karabiner (formerly KeyRemap4Macbook) which you already have installed, or (2) using BetterTouchTool which allows more flexible remapping.
Maybe you have an older version without this capability, but update to the latest version of Karabiner and you will see an "F10 to Volume Mute" remap option.
For this problem, BetterTouchTool also works well. Although it's primarily focused on mapping trackpad gestures to various actions, it also allows remapping of keyboard keys. This is a bit more flexible than Karabiner for this example, since it doesn't require the exact preset you want to already exist.