Apple Firmware Update For Magic Keyboards Decides To Change The Fn Key

Written by Michael Larabel in Apple on 16 February 2020 at 01:39 AM EST. 30 Comments
APPLE
Linux has supported the Apple Magic Keyboards since 2018 handling the Bluetooth connectivity and also needing some special handling for the numeric keypad. While that normally would be the end of the story, recent firmware updates to the Apple Magic Keyboard have caused problems.

Newer Apple firmware updates to the Magic Keyboards have caused the function (Fn) keys to be reported differently. So on current Linux kernels when running on an Apple keyboard with updated firmware, the Fn key may not behave correctly.


Ultimately a simple patch is now queued up as part of the HID-next material for Linux 5.7. With that basic patch, the Fn key behavior should be working with the Apple Magic Keyboard on their newer firmware. Of course, it wasn't Apple supplying the fix but left up to the community when encountering unexpected behavior as a result of firmware updates.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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