Re-map the apple key for Windows under Parallels | Comments (3)

Posted in Apple on 31st July 2006, 11:16 pm by Stuart

A big annoyance when using windows under Parallels for browser testing is that if you are using an apple keyboard you will find that the apple key, which as an apple user you are used to using for copying and pasting, is now mapped to the windows key. This is particularly irritating as you often want to copy and paste urls to test and everytime you go into parallels you have to remember to use Ctrl+v instead of Apple+v etc.

I was looking for a way to fix the apple key issue when I came across a post by Eric Brodeur who was looking for a solution to re-map an apple keyboard for use with Bootcamp. I took his method of using the freeware program keytweak to achieve a suitable re-mapping.

First I went into windows via Parallels and after installing KeyTweak, I used KeyTweak’s half-teaching tool to capture the keycode of the apple key which I then used to map the apple key to left-control. A swift reboot and I can now happily use Apple+C and Apple+v to cut paste. Life is good!

For convenience you can download my apple key re-mapping here which should in theory work fine for all apple keyboards. Just drop it across to you windows virtualisation via a parallels share, or download direct from this site in your windows installation.

Lastly if you have a uk install of windows you will find that the location of @ and the quotes keys is messed up. Now this problem is easy to resolve, just set your keyboard layout to the US keyboard in windows and the layout will more closely match the apple layout.

Resources

• Parallels Workstation Virtualisation software for macintels
• KeyTweak keyboard remapper for windows
• Eric Brodeur’s post, Keyboard confusion for Macs running Windows

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