jkbrzt / macos-fn-toggle

A macOS app to quickly toggle the behavior of the fn key.

fn-toggle.app

fn-toggle.app programmatically toggles the "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" option in macOS System Preferences. A task that is tedious when done manually, which especially keyboard-heavy users, such as programmers, tend to do very often.

All it does is that it executes this AppleScript snippet through an Automator-created app:

tell application "System Preferences"
	reveal anchor "keyboardTab" of pane "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
	click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

Installation

Run make install which installs the following files:

• /Applications/fn-toggle.app — the app containing the script that toggles the setting.
• ~/Library/Services/fn-toggle.workflow — a service that allows fn-toggle.app to be invoked with a keyboard shortcut.

(You can run make clean to remove those files again.)

In OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) and later, you also need to:

1. Open the fn-toggle app once either from spotlight or from Applications folder (it will do nothing but it's needed for the app to appear in the accessibility menu in step 3)
2. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Accessibility > Privacy
3. Click the lock to make changes and tick fn-toggle.app under Allow the apps below to control your computer.

Usage

Run the app. The fastest way to do it is from Spotlight:

1. Press ⌘ + space (or similar) to open Spotlight.
2. Type fn, fn-toggle.app should be the Top Hit.
3. Hit Enter.

Enable Keyboard shortcut

1. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services > General (at the end of the list) and assign a new shortcut to fn-toggle service

Contact

Jakub Roztočil

• http://github.com/jakubroztocil
• http://twitter.com/jakubroztocil
• https://roztocil.co

Alternatives

• https://github.com/Pyroh/Fluor — a really nice menubar application that allows you to automatically change the behaviour of the keyboard's fn keys depending on the active application.