Disabling the Brightness/Sound Keys

March 11, 2006 - 11:46am

Dan asks:

Question

Not long ago I read a tip on using the F14 and F15 keys for adjusting the brightness of the display on this site which answered my question on what blasted button I had pushed to do that. Now my next question is, how do I disable them?

I do photography post production work and having a properly calibrated display is critical. Each time I bump one of those keys my calibration goes out the window and I have to go through the process all over again. A real pain during the middle of a project.

Any insight you can give on how to turn off this “feature” would be greatly appreciated.

Answer

Well, I have bad news and worse news.

The bad news is that BezelServices is too early in the responder chain for a keyboard layout to change anything. I created a new key layout and set the F14/F15 keys to do nothing and it did nothing. I set them to asterisks and it did nothing (not even asterisks). The key was being interpreted higher up.

This is not to say that it can’t be done, it’s just that you’re going to lose a lot more functionality than you wanted to lose in order to get this done. You’re going to have to murder BezelServices. This will be quick and painless, and it won’t feel a thing. However, if you’re using the Apple Remote for anything (like Front Row) you’ll probably kill it dead with this.

Go into /System/Library/CoreServices/LoginPlugins and rename BezelServices.loginPlugin. Change the extension to something different (I used loginPlug) and restart the computer. The media keys will no longer work for anything.

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March 11, 2006 - 2:05pm

bahamat said

You can always pop those keys off of your keyboard. I did that with my Linux servers that have a keyboard attached because I didn’t want people to accidentally hit alt+sysrq and reboot them.

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March 12, 2006 - 6:56pm

Brontojoris said

You may find some answers on the Mac OS X Hints site

How to map F14, F15, and F16 to Exposé, Dashboard, etc.

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March 13, 2006 - 12:35am

Adam Knight said

Tried that, too. The brightness changes and the keys never fall through to the other programs. Removing BezelServices from the responder chain was the only way to make it stop. It’s too high up for other things to affect it.

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April 20, 2006 - 12:46am

pentalive said

There is a setting that forces you to hold the “fn” key to operate the adjustment keys…look in the keyboard section of the system preferences. (Keyboard and mouse section, keyboard tab)

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