I love when I come across a solution to a problem I’ve only just encountered. With my brand new aluminum MacBook in hand, I found myself confronted by an unfamiliar row of special function keys, which Apple’s rearranged and reassigned a couple of times since my original MacBook. Since every F-key now has a special function, it meant that I couldn’t use my F8 shortcut to summon my drop-down Terminal window without either hitting Fn-F8 or inverting the entire set of function keys—it’s an all-or-nothing proposition.
Enter Kevin Gessner’s FunctionFlip, which I learned of courtesy my colleague Dan Frakes. FunctionFlip is a preference pane that lets you choose exactly which F-keys you want to flip. So I can leave most of them with the hardware functions, but since I rarely adjust the ambient keyboard lighting (ooh, how I love the ambient keyboard lighting), I can re-assign those keys as shortcuts, letting me keep my Visor hotkey on F6.
Best of all, FunctionFlip is free and works with pretty much any Mac, though you’ll have to tell it which keyboard you’re using so it can get its bearings.
