Goodbye Section Key; Hello Hash Key
I have been a Mac computer user now for some five years I’ve got to say the experience has been fantastic bar one little yet highly annoying shortcoming: lack of a labeled hash key on the standard British keyboard layout. You see, here in the UK we use a currency called the Great British Pound and thus need a key for the pound sign (£). Now the simplest solution might have been to replace the Dollar ($) key for that of a pound key but that’s not what Apple decided was best. Instead, us Mac users lose the hash (#) key as to enjoy both the Pound and Dollar keys.
If you don’t fancy reading the blog post and just want the goods: here’s a link to the software and this is a link to a 8 Step video guide. You’ll be up in running in 2 minutes or your money back.
Keep reading if you want some narrative background and a six minute video step by step walk through.
What’s the big deal?
To be honest this is not normally that big a deal. The hash key can be found fairly easily by pressing the “Alt” key together with the number 3 key simultaneously. However I’m a bit slow. It takes me an age to figure out which key is the Alt key – hardly ideal. Owing to the infrequent use of the Alt key as a modifier I just don’t have the muscle memory to pull it off. Having to remember which key to press is far too involved if you ask me. I needed a better solution.
You’re probably asking why I *now* need a better solution - after all I’ve been using the Mac for five years. Well the simple answer is Twitter and hash tags. The use of such tags on Twitter has really exploded recently (whither this is a good thing or not is a blog post for another day) and now they are vital tool to ensure you are part of the larger conversation online. If you’re at an event, you need hashtags. If you’re having a bad day, you need hashtags. Even if you are watching X-Factor, you need hashtags.
Which key to replace?
After looking down at my keyboard for all of a minute my attention was drawn to a funny sign the the upper left of my keyboard. I had no idea what this mysterious “double s” sign meant and more to the point I had never ever used the key. The sign turned out the be the “Section Sign” and is used to, of all things, denote sections. ”Fantastic”, I thought, ”I can live without sections in my life”.
Editing the Keyboard Layout
Having found and condemned a key to use I next had to work out just how to go about changing the output of this key. Enter Ukelele – a GUI for editing Mac OS X key assignments. The application comes with a Quick Start guide but at 73 pages long I gave it a miss in favour of “clicking random things until it does what I want”. I eventually figured it out. Happy times.
Video Guide
The process is surprisingly simple. I’ve made a six minute guide where I talk you though everything you need to do to get an easier to use hash key. I’m fairly ill at the moment with Super Evil Killer Manflu and allow me to apologies in advance for the quality of the video. The process starts after approximately one minute of introduction.
Final Thoughts and Warnings
I’ve been using the my new Keyboard layout, which I have affectionately named BritHASH, for a few hours now and it is nothing but a joy to use. The only issue I found was with the Google Chrome browser which insisted on needing relaunched before it would play nice with the new layout. There are potential other issues with messing about with your keyboard layout but I wouldn’t worry too much – you’re not destroying any layout files here – merely creating a new, easier to use, layout file. If anything does go wrong it will be easily to undo. But with all things computer related: your mileage may vary, please don’t sue me if you destroy the “internetz”.
Follow me on Twitter
Finally, if you found this post helpful please visit me on Twitter, perhaps even give me a follow. I can’t promise to always be this helpful but I’ll give it a go.
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