This post explains how to setup the Windows specific or missing function on the Mac keyboard that you are accustomed to, or need.
For those of you deciding whether or not to get one I would totally recommend it. You can type so much faster, it feels great under your fingers, it’s quite flat so there is no pressure on your wrists and last but not least it looks beautiful!
Firstly, lets take a look at the most common things that are “missing”:
- Print Screen
- Num Lock
- Scroll Lock
- Pause / Break
- Start menu key
- and that little key on the right side of the space bar which acts as a right mouse click – I use this all the time
There are however a number of other keys on the Mac keyboard that are not on the standard windows keyboards so the plan here is to remap those extra keys or Mac specific keys to Windows keys.
I searching the net for what was the best way of doing this and came across SharpKeys.
Simply Sharpkeys updates your registry remapping the keys on the Mac keyboard to whatever you want them to be on a conventional keyboard. There are a couple rules around this but nothing that doesn’t make sense.
Here are the steps I took to get the mapping setup.
After downloading and installing, open SharpKeys and click Add, the following screen then opens up.
The left list is your Mac keyboard keys and the right hand side list is the keys you want to map to. You can now either select from the list or click Type Key (below window pops up) which is a far nicer way of selecting the key to remap.
The registry mapping code for any key you type will appear in here. Click OK when done.
You will then need to select from the right list the key you would like to map to. If you still have your old keyboard it may be worthwhile plugging it in to make your life easier by use the type Key option.
Below is a list of keys I have mapped which you can copy if you not sure or don’t have a keyboard to find the needed keys.
The mapping in order from the top – most are self explanatory but just to be clear.
- F13 key becomes Print Screen
- F14 key becomes Scroll Lock
- Right hand side Mac Command button becomes the mouse right click button you get in the similar place on a standard keyboard.
- This key is above the number 7 and left of the = sign on the numeric keypad, this becomes the Num Lock