How to reset the Mac keyboard

mac_keyboard_detectionMacs, known for their elegant design, often require knowing different ways to do such things as changing your browser, learning where your folders are, or even changing your inkjet cartridges.   Here is the easiest way to reset your keyboard. The screenshot you see here on the left shows a Mac OS X (Leopard) window that pops up when a new usb keyboard is connected. It asks user to press the key on the right of (left) shift, to detect the correct international map. Yesterday I had a problem with the keyboard of a Mac Mini I have in my office network: “<>” and “\” keys were swapped.

In the italian keyboard, “<>” is the key on the right of left-shift, and “\” (the backslash) is above the TAB key.

Apparently without any valid reason, these keys reversed their position, like (I think) they are on official Apple keyboards (I use instead a normal Toshiba PC keyboard). I tried to disconnect and reconnect the USB plug, but the selection window didn’t appear – I think because the system “remembers” that keyboard, so it doesn’t think it’s necessary to ask user to press keys to detect it again.

After a lot of Googling, I found that it’s necessary to delete a file to make Mac OS completely forget keyboard settings:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist

So, after the deletion of this file, I reconnected the keyboard and I completed the dection wizard. Keys are now fixed :)

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This content was posted Saturday 17 January 2009 on 2:57 am in category Mac, Tricks. You can follow the comments in this article with its dedicated feed in RSS 2.0. Here you can leave an answer. Pinging is not enabled.

10 commenti

  1. Carlo Zottmann said:
    November 18th, 2009

    Thanks for that. Somehow I managed to screw up my keyboard settings tonight, and this fixed it. :)

  2. Jaana said:
    May 11th, 2010

    Thank you very much. I googled for it for hours :)

  3. fredmutter said:
    May 27th, 2010

    Mille grazie
    Merci!
    Danke!

  4. Matías Halles said:
    November 5th, 2010

    Thanks. I lost half a day trying to figure this out, and would have been another whole day i think before getting to this solution :)

    PD: had the º and < keys swapped, on a Spanish ISO keyboard.

  5. Christian said:
    February 7th, 2011

    Thank you, had the same problem with a german layout pc-keyboard.

  6. HARRY said:
    February 23rd, 2011

    I CANT EVEN DELETE IT KEYBOARD IS STUCK IN CAPS LOCKS AND WHEN I TYPE NUMBERS THIS COMES UP > !@£$%^&*()_+

    IF ANYONE CAN HELP I CANT DELETE IT BECAUSE I NEED TO ENTER MY PASSWORD AND MY PASSWORD IS LOWER CAPS

  7. StoneC said:
    March 22nd, 2011

    Thanks, one hour googled an this fixed it

  8. esaruoho said:
    April 22nd, 2011

    Thank you so very much.. I’ve spent a couple of days trying to find the correct thing to look for, I couldn’t find anything useful. A helpful guy told me to check out Ukulele but my mind couldn’t focus on it, then I decided to try and look for “osx reset iso usb keyboard” and found your site, and now I have the correct ones. Thank you so much!!!!! This is a real lifesaver, pressing from the laptop keyboard whilst typing stuff on the external USB Keyboard was really doing my head in :)

  9. Alex said:
    October 5th, 2011

    how do i delete this file? copying the link into my browser only brings up text edit

  10. Nico Andrade said:
    November 2nd, 2011

    You save my day men!! I had this problem with my Spanish Keyboard

    Thank you!

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