Author Topic: Compatibility with Mac OSX  (Read 19078 times)

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Offline valenceelectron

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  • Location: Germany
Compatibility with Mac OSX
« on: Sun, 11 June 2017, 05:01:11 »
Hi there.

Is the VA87M (the USB version) compatible with/usable on OSX? *

When searching google for Varmilo and mac compatibility you will find a lot of users reporting problems, seemingly because the keyboard emulates multiple USB devices and OSX chokes on it (can't remap Alt/Win key in OSX's preferences).
However, most of these posts are quite old (~2 years) and I also found this: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=74845.msg1902107#msg1902107 but that's about it, the one and only "it works" report I found, unfortunately with no precise information.

So I'd like to ask here, hoping I'll get an answer and if possible reports from users that actually use these keyboards on OSX.
Thanks!


* More detailed questions:
- Can you swap alt/win key in preferences (I.e. is it detected as one, proper USB keyboard)?
- Can you control the backlighting? (I found reports from OSX users who couldn't do that)
- Are fn+<key> combinations registered by the OS? (Doesn't matter if they actually do something useful but they should register as a key event)
- Does scrolllock and capslock work? (And do the respective LEDs work?)
« Last Edit: Sun, 11 June 2017, 05:07:14 by valenceelectron »

Offline fancy_pantser

  • Posts: 4
Re: Compatibility with Mac OSX
« Reply #1 on: Mon, 28 August 2017, 15:35:02 »
I've had great luck on 3 macbooks, which I detail in this reply. Remapping is very simple with Karabiner-Elements and the event viewer it comes with.

Ask me anything if you need a hand and consider this a more recent success post!

Offline geek3y

  • Posts: 10
  • Location: U.S.A.
Re: Compatibility with Mac OSX
« Reply #2 on: Thu, 14 September 2017, 08:43:01 »
If Karabiner Elements doesn't work for you (as it didn't work for me), try USB Overdrive. I shared my experience with it in my reply at https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=89483.msg2491820#msg2491820.

Offline valenceelectron

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  • Posts: 6
  • Location: Germany
Re: Compatibility with Mac OSX
« Reply #3 on: Thu, 14 September 2017, 08:46:12 »
It didn't work?
For me, on 10.11, the VA87M worked out of the box. Even the media keys for for volume and iTunes playback worked out of the box. That's all I need so I never attempted to use any program.

However, the board suffers from key chatter. It's not frequent enough yet to make me send it in for repairs as this would probably take weeks. It is kind of annoying sometimes but bearable as it only focuses on the arrow keys and space, mainly.