Karabiner Settings for Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard

by Rian

Karabiner setup has gotten longer than I expected, so here’s a separate post dedicated for Karabiner-Elements.
Karabiner-Elements Setup Instruction (11/10/17 ver.)
  1. Download Karabiner from here.
  2. Install latest version of Karabiner and launch it. At the time of writing, it’s v11.1.0.
  3. In the Devices tab of Karabiner, enable Microsoft 2.4GHz Transceiver to be modified by simply checking the box.
  4. Under the same tab, uncheck all the devices except Microsoft 2.4GHz Transceiver, so that they will not be affected.
  5. In the preferences, under Simple Modifications tab, choose Microsoft 2.4GHz Transceiver as the target and press Add Item.
  6. Select ‘application’ for ‘From Key’ and select ‘right option’ for ‘To Key’.
  7. Repeat the process for ‘left cmd’ to ‘left opt’, ‘left opt’ to ‘left cmd’, ‘right opt’ to ‘right cmd’.
  8. Under the Function Keys tab, check Use all F1, F2 keys as standard function keys.
Please check this post out, if you are having problems with launching Karabiner for the first time on a new Mac with PID error message.
Optional Steps
  • In System Preferences, go to Keyboard settings. Under shortcut tab, Click Display. Disable F14/F15 brightness shortcuts.
  • If there are any additional keys you are interested in getting it to work, use Complex Modifications tab to add them.
First option will free up f14 and f15 from regular shortcuts. If you have been using those two keys for brightness, no need to mind yourself with it. In my case, I use all the way up to F15 most of the times.As for the Complex Modifications, I did consider making one dedicated for MS Sculpt Keyboard. That way you could simply tick the box and good to go. But Complex Modification was the latest feature added to the Karabiner that had few quirks with higher risks, and I would rather use Simple Modification for the time being.
The official version of Karabiner is out. It’s been years since Karabiner had been left in alpha phase, and now we have a stable, working, with impressive modification tools available at ease. For the record, several of PC-only keys cannot be captured via Karabiner, that would still require ControllerMate.As for international keyboards, I have submitted (10/26/17) Korean keyboard complex modification rules on GitHub. There are plenty more options available where it came from. Karabiner handles importing automatically, so all you have to do is pick a rule from the web.Let me know if there is any questions or concerns, I’ll try to answer them to the best of my knowledge.updated Nov 10, 2017:  Complete overhaul of the post for readability.
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