Some background. I got a MacAlly numeric keypad and a Kensington Orbit Mobile Trackball because they would just barely fit on the flat area to the right of the screens on my Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk2. The idea was this would help me get around DP easier when I was over at the MIDI keyboard instead of facing front at my "mixing station" so to speak. This is what it looks like:
- numpadtrackballonkks61mk2.jpg (114.69 KiB) Viewed 913 times
Komplete Kontrol has some transport capability, but I like being able to use the numeric pad to rewind, fast forward, but mostly use the "dot trick" and hit the "." and then enter a measure number to get somewhere quickly. But it was still a little limiting. I wished I had some more capability.
Enter Karabiner-Elements app.
Here's the link: https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
It's free and open source and supports Ventura and you have to jump through some hoops with allowing access to various things in order to install it. I made sure to do a Time Machine backup so I'd have an APFS snapshot to retreat to if things went south, but the app does also have an uninstaller if you want to remove it cleanly. Still, I'm happy to report it is not causing any issues.
Here's a screen shot of the interface.
- karabiner.png (134.93 KiB) Viewed 913 times
As you can see I set up a couple of remappings. I set up the forward delete key to be the command key so that I could hold down foward delete and then I can use the arrow keys to zoom vertically and horizontally on the timeline. I also mapped the equal sign key to "9" but on the 9 on the QWERTY keyboard not the keypad. I used those to invoke Window Sets and "9" is invokes the Window Set that moves the Control Panel and certain windows over to my 32" monitor by my MIDI keyboard.
Some good things to know... as you can see this can be device specific so only those keys on that device get remapped.
Also, you need to have the Karibiner app running in the background for it to work. I'm assuming it intercepts the keystroke from the device and changes it to the new one and passes it along. It can do much more, but I haven't figured out how. The MacAlley numeric pad has some keys "hardwired" to Cut, Copy and Paste, so I'd love to figure out if I can intercept a "combo" like Command + S and change it, but it may not be possible. So far, though, it adds some useful capability to the numeric keypad and no ill effects.
on May 3, 2023
