Use of different keyboards

[fiveyears]

Hello,

I use an american keyboard and a german keyboard with two different Macs, the workflows are synchronized. The problem is, that some hotkeys doesn't work as expected. For example alt-command-= works on both keyboards, but I have to put in the combination on both Macs again and again, because the same combination is not compatible on the two different keyboard.

 

Why is it so and what is a workaround?

 

Thanks fiveyears

[deanishe]

Hi @fiveyears, welcome to the forum.

 

I don't have different keyboards, but I often switch between German and British keymaps, and I don't know Alfred's code, so these are just my observations.

 

I wouldn't expect  ⌥⌘= to sync between machines with US and German keyboards because = is on different keys.

Internally, I believe Alfred maps the physical key (more or less), not the character on it, but the UI always shows the character the key produced when the Hotkey was set.

So if you create a Hotkey ⌥⌘; on your US keyboard, the "name" will sync across to your German machine as ⌥⌘;, but internally it's keycode 41, which means ⌥⌘Ö on your German keyboard because Ö is on the same key as ; on a US keyboard.

Definitely a bug, IMO, not showing the same character as on the key that will trigger it. Personally, I'd like to keep the "physical" mappings, i.e. muscle memory makes hitting ⌥⌘Ö way easier than hitting ⌥⌘; when I've switched to a German keyboard.