Intellitype Pro Keyboard Settings Don't Work in El Cap

As previously mentioned, this does not fix the issue for very long.

I've been using the IntelliType software since I moved to El Capitan as my daily OS. I'm sure it helps that I disabled SIP to install IntelliType, and then left it that way. Once disabled, the system acts the same as Yosemite and earlier. As I have never in my computing life have ever gotten any type of malware (Windows or Mac), and I keep double backups of all of my data, I can't see a reason to turn it back on. At least not at this time.

Hola Kurt,

In your previous posts (Oct 14, 2015 5:08 PM ) I thought you had suggested that first SIP must be disabled and once the MS drivers were installed, SIP had to be enabled again as a security precaution as recommended by Apple. But now you are suggesting not enabling SIP so that the IntelliType keyboard short cuts can continue to be available. Is that correct? Thanks and Happy New Year!!

Yes, that is the suggested method since SIP is one of the main points having of El Capitan. With it on, IntelliType would occasionally simply stop loading and I'd have to go through the whole process again to get it working. After doing that three or four times I decided to just keep SIP off. Now it always loads.

Hi Everyone,

I was having this same problem, and after reading through this thread I came up with a novel solution that seems to be working. You will need a tool like Pacifist to inspect the installation package of the Microsoft Desktop Installer 8.2, however. And I combined this with Kurt's "csrutil disable" trick. If the underlying issue here is the installer is placing MicrosoftKeyboard.kext in /System/Library/Extensions rather than /Library/Extensions, then why not just change the location of that installation? Here's what I did:

1. Boot into the Recovery Drive (Cmd-R) and run "csrutil disable" as described above. Reboot normally.
2. Mount the Microsoft Desktop 8.2 .dmg; right-click on Microsoft Desktop Installer and select "Show Package Contents."
3. Navigate to Contents/Resources/Microsoft Desktop.mpkg; right-click on that file and select "Open with..." and choose Pacifist.
4. That should launch Pacifist and show you the installation hierarchy; navigate in Pacifist to Contents of Microsoft Keyboard.pkg/System/Library/Extensions/MicrosoftKeyboard.kext; right-click on that file and select "Extract to Custom Location..."
5. In the dialog that appears, navigate to /Library/Extensions (where you will likely find a bunch of other .kext files), and select "Choose"; you will be asked for your administrator password a couple of times, and then MicrosoftKeyboard.kext will be installed in /Library/Extensions.
6. Still in Pacifist, navigate to Contents of Microsoft Keyboard.pkg/Library; right-click it and choose "Install to Default Location" to install the other needed components, like the keyboard layout and the preference pane. Probably some more administrator passwords.
7. Do the same thing with Microsoft Keyboard.pkg/Applications if you want to install the uninstaller (I already had one).
8. Quit Pacifist. Boot into the Recovery Drive and re-enable SIP with "csrutil enable." Reboot normally.

And voilá! So far, across two restarts, my Natural Ergo 4000 is fully functional, including the Favorites buttons. When I open the PrefPane I get a warning that Intellitype is not installed correctly, but everything shows up properly and all of the buttons are customizable. I don't know if disabling/enabling SIP was strictly necessary – I was in the middle trying Kurt's regular installation when this came to me – but it couldn't hurt. Hopefully I haven't broken anything else in the process!

Those are great instructions! I tried to take it a step further by modifying the two buried packages so where the files go would be modified. If you extract the file Archive.pax.gz, it shows these locations:

Simple to move things around so it looks like this:

Then create a new .gz file in Terminal and replace the original.

What I couldn't figure out how to do was replace the Archive.bom file so it would match the new file paths. I tried various ways of creating a new .bom file and the installer wouldn't work. Kept saying there was nothing to install even though the checkbox to install the keyboard software was there.

Mostly it was an exercise in "seeing if I could do it" so the installer would believe that's where these files belonged and would then hopefully eliminate the minor issue you came across of the app complaining it wasn't installed properly when entering the panel in the System Preferences.

Wow, that's the pro version of what I was trying to do! You've pretty much done 90% of all that Microsoft would have to do to release an El Capitan-compliant Desktop Installer. Hey Microsoft, one person could bang this out in an afternoon! Get on it! (I know they don't read this.)

Hey Microsoft, one person could bang this out in an afternoon! Get on it!

Absolutely! I've even contacted MS a couple of times asking them why this installer hasn't been updated since Lion.

It literally would take a programmer all of a day, or less, to make these quick changes and add a code signed file so OS X doesn't complain that the installer is from an unknown source. They keep the Windows version of IntelliType updated, so why not the Mac version?

This is the correct answer.

brilliantpebble's and kurt lang's solutions of arch 16 08:16 AM...

And did the installer work with the new/edited "Archive.pax.gz" & original "Archive.bom"? With or without using csrutil?

Thanks for your answer and work!

P.S. I wasn't able to create a functioning bom neither (tried lsbom, copy the text to text-wrangler, replacing and changing the lines that start with ./system saving it as text and then "mkbom -i "textfile" Archive.bom"). An idea could be to use mkbom with the "Archive.pax.gz"-directory...

P.S. 2: For the daily use of the MS Keyboard the osx on-board keyboard prefpane in combination with Karabiner gives pretty good results even if not all of the keys can be addressed. Some of them are simply dead. 😟

P.S. 3: Pacifist is not needed ... On board means are fully sufficent (using Finder and Terminal). Or is Pacifist needed for the described "Extract to custom Location..." and "Install to Default Location" functions? Simple copy-paste doesn't seem to work. I didn't disable/re-enable SIP.

Some of them are simply dead. 😟

Yup, which is why I got rid of Karabiner and figured out that IntelliType could be installed if you at least temporarily turned off SIP. I use the extra keys on the Ergonomic 4000 a lot, so wanted to get the MS drivers working.

The Karabiner route isn't needed at all since you can swap the Alt/Windows keys in the System Preferences. You end up at the place without using a third party app.

I still need Karabiner to swap spaces using keypad-numbers on MS-keyboard and keyboard-numbers on rMBP integrated keyboard in combination with ctrl... ctrl-1 for space 1 etc...

Ah! There's a good reason. 🙂

I started a separate thread... is there no other possibility to do this (I mean use both combinations ctrl-keypad AND ctrl- keyboard)? I used some type of a hack with ML 10.8 - but I forgot how to achieve it 😟

Sorry about repeating myselves:

Did your installer finally work with the new/edited "Archive.pax.gz" & original "Archive.bom"? With or without using csrutil?

Thanks for your answer and work!

And what do you think ybout my P.S.'s?

Did your installer finally work with the new/edited "Archive.pax.gz" & original "Archive.bom"? With or without using csrutil?

Nope, couldn't figure out how to get a correctly working .bom file. I turned SIP off with csrutil and just left it off. Haven't had to reinstall IntelliType when it suddenly decides to stop working again since.

And what do you think ybout my P.S.'s?

P.S.1 - Same. Couldn't get a working installer put together that operates as it should for El Capitan.

P.S.2 - Yup, that's why I ditched Karabiner and made the IntelliType drivers work. It was the only way to get the extra keys on the 4000 to work. Karabiner does give you a way to set up your own key assignments, but that requires knowing what key code is being sent to the OS from the keyboard. Unfortunately, without the IntelliType drivers active, many of those extra keys send no code at all, so there's no way to assign anything to them.

P.S.3 - Can't comment on that one. Didn't do that much testing.