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fred1234

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 17, 2015
7
0
Hi. I've just upgraded my 2010 macbook from 10.6 to Yosemite and everything seems to be ok so far, however I have one of those mac that has an F4 key with the circular 'Dashboard' icon on, not the row of squares for Launchpad. I tried to config it via the Sys Pref > Keyboards > Shortcuts menu but it wont work. The closest I can get is to configure it to Fn+F4 from this Shortscuts Sys Pref menu. Its a bit of a pain having to press 2 keys for one shortcut when all the other 'F' keys work fine for their shortcuts - is there a way I can configure it so that 'F4' without Fn key brings up the launchpad?... I read a few help pages and they suggested doing something with a plist in terminal, which ended up disabling my other Fn keys. I managed to fix this, but if there is a way I can make the F4 key launch Launchpad I'd appreciate the correct pointer. Thanks.
 

KALLT

macrumors 603
Sep 23, 2008
5,380
3,415
Hi. I've just upgraded my 2010 macbook from 10.6 to Yosemite and everything seems to be ok so far, however I have one of those mac that has an F4 key with the circular 'Dashboard' icon on, not the row of squares for Launchpad. I tried to config it via the Sys Pref > Keyboards > Shortcuts menu but it wont work. The closest I can get is to configure it to Fn+F4 from this Shortscuts Sys Pref menu. Its a bit of a pain having to press 2 keys for one shortcut when all the other 'F' keys work fine for their shortcuts - is there a way I can configure it so that 'F4' without Fn key brings up the launchpad?... I read a few help pages and they suggested doing something with a plist in terminal, which ended up disabling my other Fn keys. I managed to fix this, but if there is a way I can make the F4 key launch Launchpad I'd appreciate the correct pointer. Thanks.

Download the application FunctionFlip. You can access it in System Preferences after installation. It works by reversing individual function keys. Just make sure that it starts on login and keeps on running in the background.
 

Predtek

macrumors member
Oct 4, 2015
33
18
Download the application FunctionFlip. You can access it in System Preferences after installation. It works by reversing individual function keys. Just make sure that it starts on login and keeps on running in the background.

Thanks!

This works on my Late 2011 MBP on El Capitan. Was not aware of the existence of this tool. Now my F4 (Dashboard) button is remapped to open Launchpad without altering original functions of the F keys.
 
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