Fixing keyboard type on Big Sur

Inês Martins -

It seems like Big Sur is randomly defaulting the keyboard type to ANSI and, for some weird reason, Apple has removed the ability to change this directly on the keyboard settings.

What to do?

Apparently, the only thing to do is to force the OS to re-configure the keyboard:

  • Go to /Library/Preferences and see if you can find com.apple.keyboardtype.plist
~ cd /Library/Preferences
~ ls | grep keyboard
  • Either remove it or move it somewhere else (if you want to have a backup)
~ sudo rm com.apple.keyboardtype.plist
  • Restart the computer
  • You'll be prompted to setup your keyboard again
  • Confirm your keyboard type and that's it