Linux bluetooth apple keyboard

Using the Apple Aluminium Bluetooth Keyboard with Linux

Introduction

I like keyboards without numeric keypads because you don’t need to reach as far to get to the mouse. The first keyboard like this that I saw was the «Happy Hacker» keyboard, but I never bought one because there didn’t seem to be a version with a UK layout. Eventually I found the range sold by The Keyboard Company, and I bought one of their «Shortboards». This was OK, but it seemed to be unusually thick: the tops of the middle row of keys are about 35 mm above the desk, compared to 28 mm on my previous full-width keyboard. It lasted for a couple of years and then the spacebar stuck; I replaced it with another one the same and then about a week later Apple launched their aluminium keyboards, and opened a shop in Cambridge. Having first established that the one sold in the UK does actually have a UK layout (the pictures on their website and the package are all of the US version) I bought one.

The keyboard is nice and thin: only about 12 mm to the tops of the middle row, which is ergonomically good. The key spacing is the same as a normal keyboard. The feel of the keys is more like a laptop than a regular desktop keyboard, and not everyone will like it: if you’re not sure, try it out if you can before you buy one. I wasn’t sure at first but now I’m convinced, and using a normal keyboard seems incredibly clanky and clunky in comparison.

The key layout is not as good as the Shortboard, which had a column to the right of enter including home, end, page up and page down, plus insert and delete at the top-right. The Apple keyboard doesn’t have any of those; you can get home, end, page up and page down by pressing FN and the cursor keys and delete by pressing FN and backspace, but there is no insert keys at all. It also has some layout oddities which I presume are Apple vs. Microsoft things, and perhaps specific to this UK layout: \, |, `, #,

, «, @, €, alt and «cmd» are all in different places from a PC keyboard — and in the case of #, it doesn’t exist at all! (I can understand that some of these differences have existed forever and cannot now be fixed, but why is € in a different place for heaven’s sake? That’s only existed for a few years; couldn’t they have standardised it then?) See below for fixes to some of these issues.

The main misfeature of the keyboard, however, is that is a bluetooth device. The full width version is USB (only), and the narrow version is bluetooth (only). Quite why Apple believe that users of the narrow version will all want it to be wireless, and none of the users of the full-width one will, is beyond me. The problem with bluetooth, of course, is that it’s yet another bit of Linux that will need to be understood and set up correctly. Oh, and it means that it needs batteries: it takes 3 AA cells, and they seem to last only a couple of months.

It took me a ridiculously long time to get this device working properly with my Linux system, which is why I’ve written this page. Hopefully, if the search engines find it, it will save some other people from some of this agro. The following sections describe how I set up the bluetooth system, the kernel, the console keymaps and X to work with it.

I hear that users of the full-width USB version of the keyboard have encountered their own problems, mainly related to num-lock. This page won’t be of much use to them however; if you’re not using the narrow bluetooth version, stop reading now.

Bluetooth

The first thing that you need to get is a USB bluetooth dongle. There used to be a web page, maintained by Marcel Holtmann, listing devices that did and didn’t work with Linux; however the «Bluetooth SIG» (the industry group backing bluetooth) complained that publishing the list was a violation of some license agreement. This alone is a sufficient reason to not use bluetooth, in my humble opinion; if this page makes you think «WHY CAN’T I JUST HAVE A FRICKING WIRE . » then you’ve understood my mood. Anyway, it looks as if most or all of the commonly-available dongles will work with Linux to some extent. I bought two on Ebay; the first one, marked simply «Bluetooth 2.0 EDR», mostly worked but seemed to benefit from replugging occassionally. The second, marked «Edimax», seems reliable.

If you’re really lucky you may find a bluetooth dongle that has «HID proxy mode». In this mode, the dongle appears to the PC as a USB keyboard and all of the actual bluetooth complexity is hidden. This would be ideal, but the presence of this feature is not something that is ever mentioned in the product descriptions and no-one on the bluetooth mailing list was able to suggest any particular models that have it. I bought the Edimax dongle in the hope that it would have HID proxy mode (it was advertised as having a CSR chip, and CSR were the first to introduce the feature); but it didn’t. So you’ll probably need to set it up the hard way, as I did.

(Another benefit of using HID proxy mode is that you’ll be able to use your keyboard in the BIOS setup screens. If you don’t have HID proxy mode you’ll need to keep another keyboard around for the BIOS.)

So, to make bluetooth work you’ll need various kernel modules and some user-space tools. The kernel modules that I have include rfcomm, hidp, l2cap, hci_usb and bluetooth; I’m not sure what they all do. Most likely you’ll already have them if you’re using a distribution-supplied kernel. Plug in your dongle and see what gets loaded.

In Debian, the user-space tools are in the package bluez-utils. Other distributions will no doubt have something similar. There is some concise documentation in /usr/share/doc/bluez-utils/README.Debian.gz; this includes a section about configuring keyboards and mice which worked well for me. However, according to the expers on the bluez mailing lists, the method described in this Debian documentation is now deprecated. In summary, you need to:

The keyboard should now be working, and should automatically connect on subsequent boots without the need to re-do any of that configuration.

Kernel Support

These keyboards have a couple of «quirks» that the kernel includes support for. On the UK and I believe other European keyboards, the keys to the left of Z and 1 are transposed. (Some of the wrongness of the symbols on those keys is a deliberate Apple/Microsoft thing; but if you look closely you’ll probably agree that they would be slightly less wrong if swapped.) This is HID_QUIRK_APPLE_ISO_KEYBOARD. The other is the generation of home, end, page up and page down when you press FN and the cursor keys, plus various other FN related stuff. This is HID_QUIRK_APPLE_HAS_FN and is enabled (in 2.6.25) only if CONFIG_USB_HIDINPUT_POWERBOOK is set. In the regular 2.6.25 kernel, these quirks will be enabled only if the keyboard appears to the kernel as a USB device, i.e. if your bluetooth dongle is operating in HID proxy mode. Otherwise, you need to apply the following patch to net/bluetooth/hidp/core.c:

The organisation of these quirks tables will probably have changed by the time 2.6.26 comes out (look for a new file drivers/hid/hid-apple.c). With luck, this feature will have been included (I’ve posted it to the linux-input list). If not I’ll post another patch here.

With these quirks enabled, you should find that your keyboard behaves basically like a PC keyboard would: the keys should produce the symbols that the keys in similar places on a PC keyboard would produce. Furthermore, FN plus the cursor keys should do the right things. One remaining thing that you might want to configure is the default behaviour of the function keys: when pressed, should they generate the F1..F12 codes or the codes for the mutimedia functions also printed on them? The latter is the default; if you want the former, you should echo 2 > /sys/module/hid/parameters/pb_fnmode (and somehow arange for this to happen at boot). In either case, the other behaviour can be obtained by pressing FN.

Keymaps

If you want the keys to produce the symbols that are printed on them, rather than the symbols at the corresponding positions on a PC keyboard, then you’ll need to arrange for suitable keymaps to be loaded. (Personally, I’ve learnt the PC layout and I’m sticking with it, even if the keys now have the wrong thing printed on them (but see below).)

If you decide to make the keymap match the keyboard, it needs to be done twice, once for the console and a second time for X. (I’m sure I was once told that X would read and use the console keymap, but it never seems to have done so for me.) On Debian, the right way to set up the console is to run install-keymap; see its man page for details. In any case, the keymap somehow needs to be loaded using loadkeys at boot.

I forget how the X keymap should be set. As I say, I’ve left it configured as a UK PC keyboard.

You might imagine that it would be possible to detect the type of keyboard and automatically select a suitable keymap at boot. My guess is that this is not possible with PS/2 keyboards and so is not done, even though it would presumably be possible for USB and bluetooth devices. (One issue is that it would be necessary to have large amounts of keymap data available in the boot partition.)

Swapping Keycaps

Note that to a certain extent it’s possible to change the keyboard to match the keymap: the keys are easily popped off and swapped around. Not when you want to move the shifted symbol but not the lower-case one, however. I have swapped the \| (left of enter) and `

(left of Z) keycaps, and now the only symbols in the wrong places are «, @, #, ` and €. Perhaps I should attack those keys with a marker pen.

Swapping Modifiers

There are a couple of arguments for swapping some of the modifier keys at the bottom-left of the keyboard. Firstly, alt and «cmd» (the «logo key») are reversed compared to a PC keyboard. The same applies to those to the right of the spacebar. Unfortunately these keys are different sizes so swapping the keycaps is not an option. I use them sufficiently rarely that I’m not bothered about swapping them and haven’t done so.

The second possibility is to swap FN and ctrl. If you’re used to a desktop keyboard with no FN key, you’re probably used to pressing the bottom-left key for ctrl. Laptops differ about which way around these keys are, and normally it’s not possible to swap them as FN is handled in the keyboard hardware. However in this case FN is handled in software and could in principle be swapped; furthermore the keycaps are the same size and so could be exchanged.

I haven’t swapped mine, because I don’t use the bottom-left control key; I have for years re-bound caps lock as control. I do however use FN to get home, end, page up and page down. If you wanted to swap them, you’d need to hack the kernel code that implements HID_QUIRK_APPLE_HAS_FN. (This raises the issue of why this is done in the kernel, rather than in the keymap.)

Delete, and Control-Alt-Delete

I’ve recently been told that delete is obtained by pressing FN and backspace, so presumably ctrl-alt-del can be got by ctrl-alt-fn-backspace — if you have enough fingers! The following describes how I dealt with the missing delete key before I knew this:

Having no delete key is a pain, especially as it means there’s no way to send the «three fingered salute»! For a few weeks I had a second keyboard plugged in just to use its delete key to shutdown. The obvious solution is to use the eject key, at the top-right of the keyboard, for delete. (And I believe that ctrl-eject may mean power off on some Apple systems.) Initially I assumed that this would require a fix in the kernel, but it turns out that the console keymap can be used to make any key a «reboot» key. The eject key has keycode 161, so simply adding this to the console keymap is sufficient:

Note that it’s called Remove, not Delete, for some reason.

Of course you’ll need to duplicate this for the benefit of X. I’ve put this in my

/.xmodmap file; it would probably be better to make it global — and keyed to the particular keyboard — but I don’t know how to do that.

Here it’s Delete not Remove, and the keycode number is different. Great eh? 107 is the keycode for the real, non-existant, delete key; most programs seem happy to have both bindings present but bbkeys (see below) isn’t.

That should be sufficient to make control-alt-delete work from within X, if it was doing what you wanted anyway. I’ve written another whole page about control-alt-delete; I use bbkeys to bind it to a utility that pops up a «shutdown, reboot, or cancel?» menu.

Conclusion

Was it worth it? Probably; I do like the keyboard. But it took an inordinate amount of time; I probably wouldn’t have started if I’d known. Anyway, I hope it will be easier for the next people to try.

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How to pair Apple Magic Keyboard (A1314) on Ubuntu 18.04 and act as Numpad

I was browsing options for Bluetooth keyboards recently and was lucky to hit an Apple Magic Keyboard for as low as 25 Euro. Once I’ve received the packet I was impassioned to start using it. How disappointed I was when I found out that it pairs only as half-Numpad (in my case only 7–8–9–0 keys were active) and disconnects right after Caps Lock pressed. In the end I’ve found the solution which I would like to share here today.

Step 1. Make sure the keyboard is off. The best way to do that is to power cycle by removing batteries and plugging them back.

Step 2. Open terminal. Run the following commands:

Step 3. Power on your Magic Keyboard. Hold the power button and do not release until step 5.

Step 4. In bluetoothctl type:

It will start scanning for available Bluetooth devices. What we are looking for would be indicated like this:

Step 5. Copy MAC address for the keyboard from the previous step. Add keyboard as trusted device:

Once it trusted start pairing:

Step 5. Release the‘ Power on’ button on the keyboard and type PIN code on the keyboard. It won’t indicate anything in the terminal, but that’s fine. Commit PIN by hitting ‘Enter’. If pairing is successful output will be similar to that:

Step 6. Now your keyboard is paired, but most likely it will be acting as a Numpad. To resolve this issue run following in terminal:

Congratulations — now you have fully working Apple Keyboard!

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Apple Keyboard

Some keyboard models that use the Apple keyboard driver may have swapped keys or missing functionality. This article describes how to change the settings for the keyboard so that it behaves as expected.

Contents

)»> 8 have changed place with ^ and ° (or @ and #, or ` and

Numlock is on

You may find that the numlock is on. The symptoms are that only the physical keys 7 , 8 , 9 , u , i , o , j , k , l and surrounding keys work and output numbers. To fix this hit Fn+F6 twice. You might need to use a utility like numlockx .

Alternatively, set the keycodes manually using xmodmap to avoid use Numlock:

Repeating keys on a wireless keyboard

Unpair the keyboard and then re-pair it. The trick is to hold down the power button throughout the entire pairing process.

hid_apple module options

• fnmode — Mode of top-row keys

• swap_opt_cmd — Swap the Option («Alt») and Command («Flag») keys

• iso_layout — Enable/Disable hardcoded ISO-layout of the keyboard. Possibly relevant for international keyboard layouts

• swap_fn_leftctrl — Swap the Fn and left Control keys

Function keys do not work

If your F keys do not work, this is probably because the kernel driver for the keyboard has defaulted to using the media keys and requiring you to use the Fn key to get to the F keys. To change the behavior temporarily, append 2 to /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode .

To make the change permanent, set the hid_apple fnmode option to 2:

To apply the change to your initial ramdisk, in your mkinitcpio configuration (usually /etc/mkinitcpio.conf ), make sure you either have modconf included in the HOOKS variable or /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf in the FILES variable. You would then need to regenerate the initramfs.

Switching Cmd and Alt/AltGr

This will switch the left Alt and Cmd key as well as the right Alt / AltGr and Cmd key.

Temporary and immediate solution:

Permanent change, taking place at next reboot:

Swap the Fn and left Control keys

This will switch the Fn and left Control keys.

Temporary and immediate solution:

Permanent change, taking place at next reboot:

_have_changed_place_with_§_and_½»> have changed place with § and ½

This section is being considered for removal.

Alternatively, set the keycodes manually using xmodmap:

If you use a Canadian multilingual layout (where the «ù» and the «/» is switch) use this:

_have_changed_place_with_^_and_°_(or_@_and_#,_or_`_and_

)»> have changed place with ^ and ° (or @ and #, or ` and

With German layout, circumflex/degree symbol and are exchanged. With French layout, @/# are exchanged. With the US layout, `/

and are exchanged.

To change the behavior temporarily, overwrite /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/iso_layout with 0 :

To make the change permanent, set the hid_apple iso_layout option to 0:

PrintScreen and SysRq

Apple Keyboards have an F13 key instead of a PrintScreen / SysRq key. This means that Alt+SysRq sequences do not work, and application actions associated with PrintScreen (such as taking screenshots in many games that work under Wine) do not work. To fix this, you can add setxkbmap -option «apple:alupckeys» to your .xinitrc . This will map PrintScreen / SysRq to F13 , as well as Scroll lock to F14 and Pause to F15 .

Alternatively, follow the Map scancodes to keycodes article to map the F13 scancode to the PrintScreen / SysRq keycode, where 458856 (0x070068) is the scancode of F13 , and sysrq is the keycode of PrintScreen / SysRq .

Treating Apple keyboards like regular keyboards

Depending on the customisations you want to accomplish, there are two solutions available and some options that are in the kernel. You need to choose one of the other.

Use a patch to hid-apple

While the original hid-apple module does not have options to further customize the keyboard, like swapping Fn and left Ctrl keys or having Alt on the left side of Super , there is a patched version adding this functionality to the module. To use it, install the hid-apple-patched-git-dkms AUR package. This will install the patched hid-apple and mask out the original one.

The package uses DKMS to automatically recompile the module during kernel upgrades. While the dkms will be pulled in by dependency. You still need to install an appropriate kernel header package manually. See the DKMS page for more info.

In addition to the patched kernel module, a configuration file is also provided by the package at /usr/lib/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf , which enables PC-like layout by default:

• Top-row keys are normally function keys, switchable to media keys by holding Fn key, as in #Function keys do not work.
• Four keys at the lower left corner act as Ctrl , Fn , Super , Alt , in this order.
• Two keys at the lower right corner act as Alt , Ctrl , in this order.
• If you have an Ejectcd key, it will act as Delete key.

If you wish to change the default options, copy the configuration file to /etc/modprobe.d and make desired changes:

The file under /etc/modprobe.d will completely override the one with the same name under /usr/lib/modprobe.d , and the content is NOT merged.

Alternatively, put additional options in a file with a different name if you want to keep default ones,

Please refer to the project README for the exact meaning of each configuration option and tweaking the configuration file to suit your needs. Learn more about modprobe.d at Kernel module#Using files in /etc/modprobe.d/.

After installation, reboot for the change to take effect, or #Change the Behavior Without Reboot.

Troubleshooting configuration not picked up by the module

First, make sure the patched version is loaded, see what parameters are provided by the module:

If you do not see new options like swap_fn_leftctrl , ejectcd_as_delete , etc., check your dkms installation.

Then, check if configuration files are correctly included in initramfs:

Check the presence and content of inintramfs/usr/lib/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf and any other relevant configuration files in inintramfs/etc/modprobe.d . If they are not there, you should check your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf to include those. By default, there should be a modconf hook that automatically include those files, if not, add it to the HOOKS array after autodetect .

Alternatively, list those files in FILES array explicitly:

Refer to Mkinitcpio#BINARIES and FILES and Mkinitcpio#HOOKS for more explanation on what this means.

Finally, rebuild the initramfs and reboot.

Use un-apple-keyboard

If you do not need all of these customizations and you do not want to compile a new module manually or using dkms, there is an AUR package un-apple-keyboard AUR which does not rely on a new kernel module, but rather just to mappings. It enables the following features:

• The keyboard is considered as an ISO keyboard (e.g. and > located at the right of the Left Shift key are working like expected).
• The function keys are disabled by default. You need to press the Fn key in combination to trigger them. By default, the behavior are thus keys F1 to F12
• The Alt and Cmd keys are swapped.
• F13 is mapped to SYSRQ , F14 to Scroll Lock and F15 to Pause .

The first 3 aforementioned features are brought to you using the default linux kernel module hid-apple .

The last one is provided by providing a mapping to keyfuzz AUR .

Change the Behavior Without Reboot

To reload the kernel module without reboot, run rmmod hid_apple && modprobe hid_apple .

Magic Keyboard does not connect

If you have a magic keyboard that will not connect to the system through the built in tools, such as the Gnome 3 bluetooth menu in settings, install blueman and its dependencies and attempt to connect with it. If it still fails to connect, make sure you have bluetoothctl and hcitool installed.

Enable dvorak/dvp

By default xkb loads translation table (actually called xkb_symbols ) macintosh_vndr/us for macintosh keyboard:

This translation table located in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/macintosh_vndr/us and do not contains dvorak/dvp layout. You can use default translation table from /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us and add command setxkbmap in your .profile for forced loading layout:

No input during root disk decryption

You may have to manually add the hid_apple module to the mkinitcpio configuration:

Or place the keyboard hook before autodetect so that all keyboard drivers are included:

Regenerate the initramfs after doing either of these.

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