Even if you want a variation, it’s easier to start making your own from a similar layout than creating one from scratch. Before embarking on a project which might duplicate a layout already available in macOS, browse the list in System Settings > Keyboard, as explained below. These include specialist layouts such as left-handed Dvorak and Colemak, which I hadn’t even heard of. MacOS comes with a huge range of standard keyboard layouts to cater for the majority of languages and layout variants. Although macOS now uses plain black-and-white icons for the standard keyboard layouts, custom layouts can still use colour graphics. keylayout, and a separate file with the icon to be shown in the Input menu for that keyboard layout. They normally consist of a text file containing an XML definition of the keyboard layout, with the extension. They’re now stored in Keyboard Layouts folders in either your Home library folder ~/Library, or the main library. These go right back to the earliest days of Classic Mac OS, when they were defined in special Keyboard resources. When you create a custom keyboard layout, you normally specify each character to be generated by macOS for common combinations of Key Code and modifier, and you can also specify the dead keys. For example, on most English keyboards pressing Option-E followed by E will result in the accented character é, e-acute. Many keyboard layouts also support five dead keys these are keys used in combination with the Option modifier to enter accented characters. They don’t generate Key Codes as such, but are reported as modifiers to regular Key Codes. There are four main modifier keys: Shift, Command, Option and Control, shown above in green, and the fn key is a fifth when available. ![]() ![]() Do the same with the Shift key held, and the modifiers become 131330 although the Key Code is the same, and that generates the capital A instead. When you press the A key without any modifier keys held, your Mac recognises this as a Key Down event of Key Code 0 with modifiers 256, and in an English keyboard layout, that’s recognised as the character a. If you’re fluent in French and prefer an Azerty keyboard, if you write in Ukrainian, or you’re a fan of the Dvorak layout, using the right keyboard layout is the most efficient solution. When you want to map your whole physical keyboard to a different arrangement or set of characters, the way to do this is using a keyboard layout. Whatever it might say on the keys that you press when typing, the characters that appear on your Mac are determined by a software keyboard layout.
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