Given how useful the # key is, it has always annoyed me that on the standard UK Apple keyboard, getting a # key requires keying Alt-3 to get it to appear.
If you are doing web development with jQuery or writing shell scripts or python, you end up using this key a lot and Alt-3 just doesn’t work for me. However, on the left of the recent Apple keyboard, there is the § key. I’ve never used §, I guess somebody must.
Anyway, so I went and found Ukelele, a keyboard layout editor, and modified the keyboard map to put the # where the § used to be, and the result is what I call the BritishLHash keyboard layout.
How to use this:
- Download the file, and put it in your
~/Library/Keyboard Layoutsfolder. - Open Language and Text in System Preferences
- Select the Input Sources tab
- Tick next to the BritshLHash keyboard. This makes it available as an input source for you. And also Tick Show Input in the menu bar
- Find the little flag in the menu bar. Pop it up and change it to BritishLHash.
That’s all there is to it. I’ve been using this mapped file for a year or so, and it works fine in OS X 10.5 and 10.6.
Or if you want to meddle with key maps and propose changes, have a look at the GitHub repo: grasuth/britishlhash.
Note: this is a repost of the original article on this that I posted in 2010.