USB Keyboard on MAC: \ and < characters inverted

Question

I have a strange behaviour with an USB keyoboard connected to a MacBook Pro laptop. Mac OS X version: macOS Sierra 10.12.2 (16C67)

In the laptop the keys are correct, but with the external keyboard the \| keys is inverted with the <> key

How can I solve this issue? hanks.

I think this question has been answer earlier in these forums, but I can't find it. My recollection is that Karabiner can fix the problem. — Tom Gewecke, Dec 22, 2016 at 15:57
No problem, my friend! The point is that is not simple to find similar question typing the symbols "\" or "<"... If you manage to find the answer tell me! — Alessandro C, Dec 22, 2016 at 16:56
Bear in mind that people with English layout keyboards with the same basic problem will be asking about different keys, such as backtick/grave. You are using Spanish ISO, right? — Tom Gewecke, Dec 22, 2016 at 20:06
@TomGewecke Unfortunately I can't install Karabiner because, as reported in the official site, "macOS Sierra support status - Karabiner does not work on macOS Sierra at the moment." I'm using the Italian keyboard. — Alessandro C, Dec 23, 2016 at 8:34

bmike · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-03 14:58:58Z

16

This can be caused when the OS mis-identifies the keyboard. To get that back, clear the preference that saves which device is which layout.

I made as described in the post:

After doing these steps, the keyboard had to be recognized again, and it fixes the issue.

The correct keyboard for Italian is ISO (Eur).

bmike♦

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answered Dec 23, 2016 at 14:51

Alessandro C

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Very interesting! Normally I would expect a problem with that .plist to affect both internal and external keyboards.
– Tom Gewecke
Dec 23, 2016 at 15:08
Had this issue on my Hackintosh, with a Corsair K70 LUX RGB mechanical keyboard using ckb-next as driver. This worked, thanks!
– Manchineel
Jan 15, 2019 at 21:29
2

This helped me to solve the same problem on a late 2011 Mac Book Pro and an external logitech k120 italian keyboard. Thank you a lot. Vabbè... visto il nome.... grazie mille Alessandro.
– Patrizio
Mar 3, 2019 at 14:03
1

@Patrizio Figurati! :)
– Alessandro C
Mar 4, 2019 at 10:14
This worked for me, I had the exact same issue but with a Spanish keyboard. However the order of the steps I needed was delete file, restart, disconnect, reconnect.
– Konamiman
Jul 14, 2020 at 12:01

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