I personally had never seen it before, but it’s been hiding in the System Preferences Accessibility tab. Folks who are familiar with Apple’s Accessibility Keyboard have no-doubt recognized my screenshots as being familiar from past OS releases. How did they possibly find time to add all this great functionality in one OS upgrade? They didn’t. It’s a powerhouse of utility superpowers. The options for configuring these keys even include options to perform multiple keystrokes, open apps, run scripts, etc. This example is obviously comical, but the point is you can create and layout tappable regions that correspond to whatever keystrokes you desire. It’s essentialy a construction set for building virtual keyboard layouts: When you select it, a dedicated application called “Panel Editor” opens up. Click it, and this what you get:Ī whole slew of options for tweaking the behavior of the virtual keyboard, and an enticing “Customize…” item at the bottom. Well, isn’t that spiffy? But what I really want to talk about is that little Gear Button in the upper right corner of the window.
#NOODLESOFT PERMISSIONS MACOS MAC#
I don’t see any hint of this on the Apple marketing sheet for the OS, but this is what the Keyboard Viewer looks like on my Mac now: On macOS 10.15 Catalina, Apple has evidently dramatically overhauled the Keyboard Viewer. The Keyboard Viewer not only reflects every bona fide keystroke you make on a hardware keyboard, but also allows you to simulate keystrokes by tapping on the keys of the on-screen keyboard. I brought it up recently while I was debugging an issue with keyboard shortcuts in FastScripts, my scripting utility app. I don’t use the Keyboard Viewer often, but when I do, it’s a real life-saver. Apple has detailed instructions for configuring the menu and these options. If you’ve never played with this, I encourage you to enable it and check it out. Long-time Mac users will remember an app called “Key Caps”, which later become “Keyboard Viewer”, a feature of the Mac that is now accessible via the menu bar’s “Input Methods” item.