Set Up German Version macOS

Table of Contents

I got a Macbook with a German keyboard layout, and I am not accustomed to it. This post summarizes some tweaks made to the German version of Macbook to make it work for me.

Add an input source for US keyboard
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Luckily I have also got a magic keyboard with US keyboard layout. To use it, we need to add a new input source for it, go to keyboard section in system settings. In Text Input --> Input Sources, click edit and then click + in the bottom left corner to add new keyboard. Choose English, and then select a keyboard layout. For example, we can use ABC or US, they are more or less the same.

How to type special German characters easily
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In the US keyboard, we can not type special German chars directly, but there are some shortcuts to input them.

To type umlaut character, i.e., äöü. Press option key and u together, release now, and then press the un-umlauted character to get its umlaut char.
To type ß, simply press Option and s at the same time.

references:

type special German char on macOS, https://www.nthuleen.com/teach/misc/typingumlauts.html

Switch the Fn and function keys in macOS
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When I press functions keys on my macOS, they perform the functions printed on the keyboard, for example, if I press F12, the system volume is turned up, instead Fn + F12 works as real F12. I do not like this behavior, and would like to switch the behavior. How to do this?

Open system settings, open keyboard settings pane, click Keyboard shortcuts.... In the opened page, click Function Keys and turn on the option Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.

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