Comments on: Redefine the X11 Meta Key in Mac OS X

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:33:21 +0000

You could of course, just use AquaEmacs (http://aquamacs.org/)

By: Thulasinathan Kandasamy

Thulasinathan Kandasamy — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 01:55:03 +0000

Mapping alt/option key to meta key woks just cool for me as well. Thanks

By: Christian

Christian — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:36:00 +0000

Hi there,

mapping meta to alt just works fine for me, too. But there is a large problem for people with a german keyboard layout: you need to type Alt-N to get ~ and Alt-L to get an @. But I am not able to type these 2 signs anymore, if I don’t have an alt key any longer. Are there any suggestions for this? Could I somehow map the key right to the right command key to be an alt key? And would this again be translated to meta?

By: Mahesh

Mahesh — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:55:14 +0000

very helpful. thanks for the article. .Xmodmap change is helping me a lot while navigating in the bash interactive shell.
–mahesh n

By: Olga

Olga — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:36:59 +0000

Denali, thanks for your tip! It solved my problem.

Olga

By: Denali Lumma

Denali Lumma — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:51:24 +0000

Hi There,

You need to configure the mac ‘terminal’ application so the ‘alt / option’ key sends ‘meta’. In order to do this, go to:

Terminal > Preferences > Settings > Keyboard

and select the ‘Use option as meta key’ checkbox at the bottom of the window.

I hope that helps,

-Denali

By: the jakbot - Redefine the X11 Meta Key in Mac OS X

the jakbot - Redefine the X11 Meta Key in Mac OS X — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:25:08 +0000

[...] http://tylerkieft.com/archives/2006/10/05/redefine-the-x11-meta-key-in-mac-os-x/ [...]

By: Randy Bushq

Randy Bushq — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:26:50 +0000

i LIKE meta being apple key. but why is it not working in emacs? lack of meta in emacs is killing me!

[ long time bsd/emacs user with new macbook ]

By: Tyler

Tyler — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:57:50 +0000

@Lance - That’s not the problem that this article is trying to solve. But to comment on your issue, a native port of Gtk+ for Mac OS X is currently being developed. Gtk+ is a graphics/windowing toolkit which is standard fare on Unix/Linux systems. When the port is completed, apps like Gimp will be able to be run on Macs without using X11. One of the features of this port is that ctrl+ shortcuts will be remapped to command+ shortcuts.

See the Gtk+ for Mac OS X Development Page for more details.

By: Lance E Sloan

Lance E Sloan — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:20:09 +0000

It didn’t work with GIMP. That is, after the change, I expected to use the command key with the underlined letters in the UI in order to activate them, and that didn’t work. I thought that command-F would open the file menu, etc. But it doesn’t, it still requires option-F instead.