MBA keyboard keys switched & typing wrong characters (language settings are correct)

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Level 1

4 points

MBA keyboard keys switched & typing wrong characters (language settings are correct)

Hello there,

I noticed today that my keyboard (2023 MBA 15, German keyboard layout) has started producing wrong characters on some keystrokes.

To start off: I have googled a bunch of similar questions and in a lot of cases the language settings for the keyboard had been misconifgured. in my case, those are all set correctly, I have checked repeatedly:

(sorry for the German. This setting is correct.)

Examples of things going wrong:

the key left to nr 1 and the one right of the left shift button have switched places. You can see in the screenshot that I am pressing the ^-key (key left of 1) but I am typing the <-key.

some keys have switched positions
- the tilde symbol ~ was usually typed with alt-n, now it is alt-+.
- I often type out three dots ..., which usually is done by alt-. That combination now types a point in the middle of the line: ·

I probably haven't found every thing that is wrong or changed.

I have no idea when these these changed appeared first or how or why. Could it be in connection to the recent update to Sequoia? I only updated a few days ago.

I am super confused by this, what is going on??

Can somebody help?

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Air 15″

Posted on Nov 19, 2024 10:11 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,388 points

Nov 20, 2024 6:52 AM in response to klsmn

For the tilde and 3 dots, you have the wrong input source in your keyboard settings. You want to have German and NOT German Standard.

For the switching of the keys at the left corners, you have a keyboard type probem:

How To Fix Keyboard Type Problems - Apple Community

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Answer 2

klsmn Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 20, 2024 8:01 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thank you!

That already helped, I wonder how it switched form German to German Standard, because I sure didn't do anything with it.

The instruction on fixing keyboard type problems (link) sadly did not work – yet.

I am not getting the Keyboard Setup Assistant to show at all. The Terminal commands opens another terminal window and it ends like this:

Is there anything that has changed with the Keyboard Setup Assistant so that that command wouldn't work anymore?

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Answer 3

klsmn Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 20, 2024 8:25 AM in response to klsmn

Thank you!

That already helped, I wonder how it switched form German to German Standard, because I sure didn't do anything with it.

The instruction on fixing keyboard type problems (link) sadly did not work – yet.

I am not getting the Keyboard Setup Assistant to show at all. The Terminal commands opens another terminal window and it ends like this:

Is there anything that has changed with the Keyboard Setup Assistant so that that command wouldn't work anymore?

Edit:

I attempted an SMC reset and as programs were coming up after the restart, I started typing into Safari (only bc ist was already there…):

So it got it right two times before messing up again. While this was going on, Karabiner threw out something but disappeared again quickly. I've desintalled that again, as I had before but that didn't fix anything.

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,388 points

Nov 20, 2024 10:10 AM in response to klsmn

Strange behavior! Karabiner should let you switch the keys. Otherwise you could also make a custom layout tht does it pretty easily with Ukelele.

https://software.sil.org/ukelele/

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