Mac Keyboard Guide
Remap Meta Keys
So you’ve procured a pleasingly cheap keyboard and mouse for your new Mac mini. What happens when you plug them in?
PC+Mac Key Equivalents
Apple
PC
Mac OS X maps the keyboard’s PC-unique meta keys to the Mac’s most-closely matching keys. However, this mapping results in different key locations than an Apple keyboard. On an Apple keyboard, the Command keys are adjacent to the space bar; the PC keyboard mapping places the Option key in this position, with Command (Windows) one button farther away. To correct this, we remap the keys with DoubleCommand.
For this application, we select the “Command key acts as option key” and “Option key acts as command key” check boxes. To apply the changes to current session, click Activate; to apply them for the user account at login, click User; for the entire the computer at boot, click System.
The PC keyboard’s Alt key is now Command, matching Apple’s placement of the that key. The Windows key is Option; physical destinations of this key vary with keyboard manufacturers, but as Option is used relatively infrequently, we feel this is a minor (and tolerable) deviation from Apple’s norm.
For additional coverage of DoubleCommand, please see our full review.