Apple Keyboard Mapping and Windows Style Function Keys on Windows 7 x64

Work on Windows you pesky Apple keyboard!

I develop with .NET, but have a MacBook Pro and use Bootcamp. Now I want an Apple keyboard on all my Windows boxes. It’s not for love of their keyboards, it’s for consistency.

This should be simple right? We’ll it’s not. Here are my learnings to date.

Important: This works for me on x64 Windows 7. I have not tried x86.

Install the Bootcamp Windows drivers

Install the Bootcamp Windows drivers to make all the keys work correctly.

I did the following:

  1. Get an OSX install DVD that includes Bootcamp. AFAIK you can’t download this from Apple and the Bootcamp updates on the Apple website DO NOT WORK.
  2. Pop the DVD in your Windows machine drive and run Drive:\Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple\x64\AppleKeyboardInstaller64.exe
  3. You should be good to go! (you may need a reboot).

Toggle the Function Keys (Optional)

The Bootcamp driver defaults the Function Keys (F1, F2 etc) to their Apple alternatives (e.g. brightness up/down, volume up/down etc). If you want good old F1 and friends, edit the registry as follows:

Change the value of the following two keys from 01 to 00 (via GeekHack))

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior

Happy tapping.