My MacBook has a very strange keyboard layout...

Hi, so I bought a second hand macbook pro 16” a while ago and I noticed it had an AZERTY keyboard which didn’t bother me at all but then after using it I realized that the layout was quite strange and not like any other AZERTYs I’ve used.


I did some research and found out that it’s a Belgium layout keyboard, I had an external Windows keyboard and thought about using that but the layout from inside the OS/system wasn’t changing. If a key is there then no matter what I do from settings it’s always going to stay on the same layout. There are some symbols that I still don’t know how to type and have to actually copy them from Google when need to use... and some very other basic would require like a 3 key presses to achieve. 


I work as a developer and recently I have been thinking about expanding my setup (getting an external monitor and cool stuff) but I would need to use an external keyboard for that as well but realized that I might be stuck with this MacBook for life and can’t even get a setup without going out of my way and buying an Apple magic keyboard with that weird Belgium layout.


I was wondering if anyone knew some sort of hack or tool or whatever that allows me to change the keyboard layout from the system? Also the Apple external keyboard setup thingy didn’t detect any different layout or so.


I would really appreciate some help on this, thanks in advance (attached current keyboard layout image)


MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 22, 2021 3:17 AM

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Apr 22, 2021 10:50 AM in response to sleepydev

Go to system preferences > keyboard > input sources and tell us what you have on that list. For the keyboard in your picture, you should have only one item on the list, and the name of the item should be "French". Then the output should match the keys. (There is nothing strange about the keyboard itself, it is standard Apple French.)


Here is Apple's info about changing keyboards


https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/type-language-mac-input-sources-mchlp1406/11.0/mac/11.0


If you have an external keyboard you prefer to use, then change the item on the input source list to match the mapping of your external.

Apr 22, 2021 2:39 PM in response to sleepydev

sleepydev wrote:

There are some symbols that I still don’t know how to type and have to actually copy them from Google when need to use...

I forgot to mention, for that problem, with any layout, you can use Keyboard Viewer to find out where the missing symbols are located:


https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-the-keyboard-viewer-on-mac-mchlp1015/11.0/mac/11.0

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My MacBook has a very strange keyboard layout...

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