Some keyboards geared towards Windows have useless keys for a Mac. Can they be remapped? Well, perhaps like me, say you have a pretty nice Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard attached to your Mac, but it’s got this otherwise useless Application/Submenu key on the right side. You want it to be something useful, perhaps mimicking the right Option/Alt key on the standard Apple keyboard. Here’s how you can remap that otherwise useless Application key to something useful under Mac OS using Karabiner (with thanks to StackExchange and KeyChatter)

  • Install Karabiner-Elements

    brew cask install karabiner-Elements

    or install by downloading installer directly from their website

  • Open Karabiner-Elements application

    This will start karabiner and you should see a new icon in your Mac Menu Bar.

  • Add new key-code to karabiner

    You’ll need the Event Viewer, so from Mac Menu bar, Karabiner-Elements >> Launch Event Viewer.

    In the main tab, click on the key you want to be able to remap, e.g. the submenu/application key on the MS Ergonomic keyboard. Then, in the upper right of the event-viewer window, you can click on add "application" to Karabiner-Elements

    That will add the key-code into the list of re-mappable keys via the karabiner preferences.

  • Remap the key

    • Open the karabiner Preferences >> Simple Modifications tab.
    • Select target device (e.g. Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard)
    • Click Add item in the lower left
    • Select Application as the from key and then right-option as the to key.