MacOS – Only alphanumerics and some other keys work on magic keyboard

accessibilitykeyboardmacos

My Magic keyboard is acting very weird. The caps lock’s light is off and non-functioning. Mainly its alphabets + numbers, Enter , Cmmd work. But the tab, space and delete keys don’t work. The right arrow key works. But if I hit the left arrow key, then it produces the following single quote: '

Is it botched or mis-configured or is some accessibility feature? I already forgot the device and re-connected it. That didn’t do anything

It’s just this one magic keyboard. I have another which works fine. I’ve done a reboot.
Sticky keys are disabled.

When I use the keyboard viewer. Nothing gets highlighted for the space or delete button. Surprisingly when I click on the left arrow key, I got the left arrow and the single quote key highlighted ?

I also followed most steps from here and here but not worked for me.

I'm starting to think that this is mainly due to the bashing my little one has done on my keyboard…

Best Answer

Likely the keyboard is physically damaged by my child or water damaged. I just tried it with my iPad and same symptoms.

Sounds like a good opportunity to do a keyboard teardown

Related Solutions

MacOS – command-delete key remapping

Try using KeyRemap4MacBook instead. Save a file like this as ~/Library/Application Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::BACKQUOTE, KeyCode::DELETE</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then open the KeyRemap4MacBook application, press the ReloadXML button, and tick the checkbox for the setting.

MacOS – Key remapping without Karabiner

Sadly, with MacOS Sierra, Karabiner has gone into a strange kind of hiatus-but-not-really-because-someday-we'll-fix-it.

Which is too bad, because Karabiner was the perfect tool for what I needed (which was make MacOS behave like a forty-year-old UNIX terminal because my stupid fingers still hit ^W to delete a word and I kill the window and I can't stop, no, don't help me, I'll die eventually and then my problem is fixed).

My other main tool is Typinator for abbreviations--w for with, h for the, n for and, etc; those really add up.

So far, I've found BetterTouchTool to be a viable replacement for Karabiner, even better in some ways. But worse in others; key repetition doesn't work for me despite the developer saying it does. (Possibly it interacts with Typinator, but turning the latter off doesn’t fix the problem.)

I've written a whole novel using these two tools (Typinator and BetterTouchTool), but I'd appreciate anyone chiming in if they've found something better still.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – command-delete key remapping

MacOS – Key remapping without Karabiner

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