keyboard viewer works as a hidden key reader?

Question

Level 1

8 points

keyboard viewer works as a hidden key reader?

Hi,

I have a strange behavior with the keyboard viewer I do not understand and I want to make sure this is standard behavior.

There are actually two aspects:

1. When I open the keyboard viewer then the two keys 'quotation marks' and 'circumflex' (on a Swiss German keyboard) are permanently highlight, in orange actually (see picture below). Why, is this normal?

2. Sometimes, when I am being asked to enter an administrator name and password, then the keyboard viewer automatically pops up, though it has not been active before!

This I find really strange and makes me suspicous, because of course somebody could read my password on the keyboard viewer (it flashes every key I press) while typing the password.

Is there somebody out there who can explain it to me, or at least tell me that I got caught by a trojaner or the like!?

Thanks a lot!

MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), OS X Mountain Lion, OSX 10.8

Posted on Feb 21, 2013 2:06 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,620 points

Feb 21, 2013 6:02 PM in response to zurich8000

The orange highlight means it is a two-stroke key. You use those to combine the accent with other characters. You press the key, and the accent will print, highlighted in yellow. You then type another key to combine with that accent.

Normally, those are accessed by using the option (alt) key, but it appears those are "hot." They do not need the Option key to activate the combining function.

Now, for it popping up. I had that problem recently when I was playing with other input sources. I never figured out why it was happening, and I wish I could remember how I disabled it. I think I removed the keyboard viewer from the menu. However, I have it back now, and I am not getting those popups.

Reply