Apple keyboard mysteries

Hardware
1

I’ve been battling with the strange behaviour of one of my bluetooth keyboards for a while and I still haven’t managed to figure it out.

I have two very similar MacBook Airs, both dating back from 2015, both with Mac OS High Sierra. I use them for slightly different purposes, so I was finding myself having to connect/disconnect the one BT Apple Keyboard (the old model, with the removable batteries) from one to the other. I therefore bought a second Apple BT keyboard to use with the second computer. It’s a new model, with rechargeable battery.

And now for the problem: the second keyboard’s function keys work differently, trigger other actions. This is especially irritating for volume, because I constantly need to go the upper menu.

I looked online but found no description of my problem. I haven’t changed any of the keyboard settings and I wouldn’t think I should since keyboard number one still works fine with computer number two. Surely settings are not stored inside the keyboard?

Does anybody have any brilliant ideas?

Thank you.

2

Are the Keyboard Settings (Preferences → Keyboard) really are all the same for both Keyboards?
Or are you just assuming they are the same, as you did not any changes by yourself?

3

There is a system setting for these things, and they differ depending on the Keyboard.

For Ventura (I’m not sure about the English equivalence, but something like this):
System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Function keys

There you can set how the function keys should work. I prefer them as F1–F12, so I have checked this:

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4

I have actually just assumed! There are quite a few, so I haven’t checked all of them. I thought they were per computer, not per keyboard.
I’ll look ASAP!

1 Like
5

If I have to compare something like that, I do normally a couple of Screenshots, to compare the pictures later without the need of an often switching.