Can't unmap F14/F15 from brightness

Here's the fix!

This was really annoying me too, and here's how I fixed it. Apparently the Display option only appears in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts when a non-Apple keyboard is attached to your Mac. I plugged in a Dell USB keyboard, did the little dialog box / walk-through to recognize (identify) it, and opened System Prefs. The Displays option magically showed up, allowing me to un-check F14 & F15 for monitor brightness. And the setting sticked when I swapped back to my Apple keyboard. I can think of no good reason that this option is hidden when using an Apple KB, but there you go!

I had this problem with unresponsive F14+F15 keys on Sierra too and only working solution for me was to listen to them using BetterTouchTool and convert these events to another key presses, for example Cmd+F14 which you can bind in any app or run desired action directly from BTT.

I don't know how in the world you found this!

I've been looking for an answer for months!

It does NOT work with a bluetooth keyboard, by the way. Unless I'm doing something wrong.

Now I have to go look for a non-apple USB keyboard...nertz. thanks again for this!

THANK YOU @krl09! I can confirm your approach works 100%

After several calls to Apple (tier 2 support), with requests straight to engineering, no one was able to make "display" show up within SYSTEM PREFERENCES > KEYBOARD > SHORTCUTS. I bought a $15 windows keyboard and attached it to my MacBook Pro. I then followed the process above and "Display" showed up. I was then able to unselect decrease and increase display brightness from F14 and F15 keys.

I can now use the F14 and F15 key for something useful!

*** I will also add, this appears to be a permanent solution. I have since un-plugged the keyboard and restarted my MacBook. I can report that "display" still successfully shows shows within the process outlined above, which means I'll have the ability to select/un-select in the future if I need to ***

I have since returned the windows keyboard as this was all I needed it for.

I have to say, this was extremely frustrating and Apple engineering had terrible excuses as to why "display" was not showing, it was clear they didn't know why and were trying to hide/mask the issue.

krl09 wrote:

Here's the fix!

This was really annoying me too, and here's how I fixed it. Apparently the Display option only appears in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts when a non-Apple keyboard is attached to your Mac. I plugged in a Dell USB keyboard, did the little dialog box / walk-through to recognize (identify) it, and opened System Prefs. The Displays option magically showed up, allowing me to un-check F14 & F15 for monitor brightness. And the setting sticked when I swapped back to my Apple keyboard. I can think of no good reason that this option is hidden when using an Apple KB, but there you go!

I also confirm this.

I think there is a plausible explanation in that the Apple keyboards already have hardware keys for display brightness (in the F1 and F2, both in the built-in MBP keyboard and the bluetooth Magic Keyboard); furthermore, they do NOT have any F14 and F15 keys.

I have this same problem except I'm having it with a 2014 15-inch rMBP and with a third party full size keyboard, ever since Sierra 10.12.1. So its definitely related to this most recent update to Mac OS

Maybe you want to change the state of the checkbox in System Preferences->Keyboard that says something like "use F1... as standard function keys" (not ag my mac right now to confirm the exact wording).

Luis, Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately that does not resolve the problem. Even if it did, it wouldn't be the best permanent fix. I have to think this is a bug or something with the 10.12.1 update because as far back as I can remember, F14 and F15 have never been used by the system by default for anything before. That's why I use Alfred to to use those keys as an alternate for system volume control and has been working great for me for years now.

So lets hope its just a bug and not another victim in Apple's private little war against the F keys ;-)

FWIW, on my MBA the F1 and F2 keys change the display brightness regardless of the function key settings using an Apple Extended wired keyboard. The F14 and F15 keys don't do anything.

edit: I explained that badly but the bottom line is the F14 and F15 don't do anything for me. Immagonnago check my 2015 MacBook.

dialabrain, interesting. I've tried 2 3rd party keyboards as well as an Apple Extended keyboard all with the same results. Curious, do you have the latest 10.12.1 update? If so and you seem to not be having this issue, I wonder if there are different builds of that version that could be doing this. I say that because the original poster has a brand new 2016 MBP so I'd assume they have the lasted, and even though I have an older 2014 MBP, I recently wiped my and reinstalled Sierra clean. And I don't recall having this issue before I wiped the system. Currently I'm running 10.12.1 (16B2657)

As another data point someone in my office has a 2015 13" MBP with the same exact version build that I have and on his system with an Apple Extended Keyboard F14 F15 do brightness as well now.

I checked both a 10.12.1 release version also 2657 on the MBA and a 10.12.2 beta release on the 2015 MacBook. Same results. Just for sport I pressed the F14 and F15 keys on one of my iMacs. Depending on which window was in focus or in the case of the Finder, which folder I was in gave me different results. None changed the display so I'm at a loss.

dialabrain,

Thanks for checking that out. This is really weird, I too am at a loss. I'll have to keep researching this further.

Welcome. If I run into an answer I'll post back if i can find the thread again. 😎

I also checked to be sure.

El Capitan on top, Sierra next. The only difference is Sierra adds the Dictation tab. Otherwise, the controls for the keyboard are in the same place.

Kurt,

Very interesting! Because this is what I have and as you can see, I don't have "Display" listed in the left column.

Which sort of explains a lot because the moment I discovered this problem I went here looking to see if I noticed F14 and F15 being used for anything, but alas, its totally missing from the list. Now here's the $50 million dollar question. Where the heck did "Display" go?! LOL