mackeyboard

Mac Keyboard to Windows Key Mappings

Years of accumulated muscle memory is useful to be efficient at work. When our fingers sense a Mac keyboard underneath, they instinctively adapt to a Mac-style of hot keys. This repository should assist in ensuring continuity when using a Mac keyboard on Windows operating system with the help of AutoHotkey key-mapping tool.

To get this working,

1. Download and install a copy of AutoHotkey in a folder, say, C:\Apps\misc\ahk

2. Download a copy of mackeyboard.ahk from this repository

3. Run the following in Command Prompt to activate all key mappings:

   C:\Apps\misc\ahk\v2\AutoHotkey64.exe "C:\Apps\misc\ahkscripts_v2\mackeyboard.ahk"
   

4. Optional: To automate this at boot, a batch file, say mackeyboard.bat, can be created with the following contents:

   @echo off
   C:\Apps\misc\ahk\v2\AutoHotkey64.exe "C:\Apps\misc\ahkscripts_v2\mackeyboard.ahk"
   exit
   

The batch file can then be placed under the Startup folder. (Get to the Startup folder by running shell:startup.)

Works with

1. Apple Keyboard – any model
2. Any Keyboard with MacOS layout

Application-specific shortcuts

To write application-specific shortcuts, as an example, the following may be used:

; In Microsoft Outlook only
;#IfWinActive ahk_class rctrl_renwnd32
#HotIf (WinActive("ahk_class rctrl_renwnd32"))

::gm::Good morning,

::gf::Good afternoon,

#HotIf

Trivia

May 2017. Three months ago, I began using my Logitech G610 keyboard at work to avoid managing KVM hygiene everyday, side-effect of a hot-desk policy. It is a fine, if hefty, full-sized keyboard, and that became a problem. I mean at the end of every work day, I'd unplug to shove it inside a one-foot locker, leaving very little usable room for anything else.

Not wanting to buy yet another, I pulled my seldom-used Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard out. This is in many ways worse than its large, corded sibling. For the portability, you inherit its handicap of missing keys — some of them critical to be productive; this aside from the prospect of blowing one's mind with jumbled hot keys across OSes — Mac at home; Windows at work. To recover sanity, I looked at ways to remap keys so I could use Mac hot keys on Windows, and found AutoHotkey promising. As a general scripting tool, however, there is no way around the manual, and it so took me a good few trial and error compiles to get to a set of usable hot key mappings.

It runs just fine in the background capturing all my hot keys, pressed in Mac style, and transforming them into Windows hot keys on-the-fly. In addition, it's also good as a simple text expander, which saves me some repetitive typing.