TLDR; If you're used to typing on the MAC keyboard (have high WPM) and want the best Keychron mechanical keyboard that will deliver the same Typing experience (No relearning needed) - Consider only these 3 options - Keychron K3 (Exact same layout as Macbook), k5 (100% keyboard with numpad) or k7 (compact Layout, no fn keys).

Now, if you want to hear the story of how I found the perfect keyboard. for my Desktop setup at home with a MAC mini, continue reading.

Before I started my journey, I'd only used the mechanical Keyboard once, for a couple of days with my iPad when I was staying over at a friend's. I had the following criteria for my perfect keyboard.

i) Mechanical Keyboard with switch options (I love Banana switches, but I have blue now, more on that later)

ii) RGB lighting on Keyboard

ii) No relearning when coming from a MAC keyboard (i.e my WPM should be around 80-90 and can easily switch between Laptop and Desktop).

So, I started my mechanical keyboard search by asking my friend what keyboard was it that I used at his house. He told me that it was Keychron K2, so I went and ordered myself a Keychron K2 with Blue switches as I saw a review on Youtube that Blue switches are the way to go if you want a clicky keyboard.

The keyboard was good, it had that sweet clicky satisfying sound, but my WPM went down and I was mistyping words. I then checked my WPM and it had reduced to 50-54. I was so sad because I really liked this keyboard, the typing feel it gave and how I felt whenever I used this.

I thought the issue was that the keyboard was small and mind you, at this point I had no idea about keyboard sizes. You see the K2 is a 75% keyboard and and the macbook is also 75% keyboard layout but the keys are more spread-out on the MAC.

So, I decided to go all in on Keychron mechanical keyboard and go a size higher as I thought the issue was the 75% layout, I returned the K2 and bought the Keychron Q3 pro SE with banana switches because of the rave reviews banana switches had (This is a 80% keyboard for reference). The design was awesome, I felt like a DJ using it becuase of the knob it had.

The keyboard was awesome, it was everything I wanted and then some. but just when I thought I had found the perfect keyboard, I hadn't. My WPM went down and it was now 32 and I was so frustrated all the time because I was mistyping so much that, I don't think I finished a word without hitting the backspace.

This was really sad because the banana switches felt so good on my fingers and trust me if you're looking for the best switches in the market, in my opinion the banana switches are one of the best. So, I decided to give this keyboard a try and get used to it. However, even after a week, my WPM only went up to 40, and as I still was switching between my MAC and desktop, I started to lose my MAC's typing speed as well. I was frustrated at this point and then I started doing even more research for hours and hours.

Turns out, the key height matters when you're typing, and my Q3 had really really tall keys and they were really close to each other, which was the reason I was mistyping a lot. Based on this information, I set out to find the perfect mechanical keyboard for my MAC again.

During my search, I came across Logitech MX mechanical Mini for MAC. But this laptop pissed me off so much. Because it's a 3rd party laptop from a well-renowned company and they won't let you customize it (JUST LIKE AN APPLE MAGIC KEYBOARD). I mean there's no RGB version, there's no option for choosing switches, I think it comes with brown switches and that's it. (WHY WOULD I BUY THE KEYBOARD FROM YOU AT A SIMILAR PRICE WHEN I CAN JUST GET THE MAGIC KEYBOARD WITH THE TOUCH ID??).

Then it came down to Nuphy Air 75 and the Keychron K3 series. I really wanted to try the Nuphy because people were saying great things about it and they have 3 unique switches they created in partnership with Gateron, but they didn't have any in stock on Amazon and the ones from Nuphy's website said 3 weeks for delivery.

So, I decided to go for the K3 instead. Sadly, there's no banana switch option for this variant, just the standard blue,brown or red. Just before I was about to order, I also saw the k5 and it sounded similar to the k3 except that it was 100% keyboard layout. I got both k3 and k5, hoping I would keep the one I liked. I got k5 with brown and K3 with blue switch.

Both are the exact same in terms of typing experience and my WPM went back to 80 (wooooohoooo). I felt that the k3 was more suited to me than the k5. So, I returned the k5 and now, I'm typing this on my brand new almost perfect k3 keyboard.

I say almost perfect, because I couldn't get this keyboard with Banana switches. I know you can individually replace all the switches but I don't have the time or the patience for it. If anyone knows about how to get the banana switches on the k3 keyboard without much fiddling around, please, please let me know, I miss my banana switches and I'm willing to pay the price of a new keyboard to get them on this thing.

Last note: My search was really difficult as I was not able to find any reddit posts or any post really related to Keychron and the mac keyboard. So, trying upvoting or whatever (I'm relatively new to reddit), to spread the word.

I find that the longer I type on a mechanical, the harder it becomes to type on a MacBook keyboard.

I would love a mechanical that has the exact same layout as the MacBook keyboard.

This means a full-size right shift key. Small inverted T arrow keys below the right shift. And a `fn` key on the left. Also the alignment of the function keys is important.

The NuType F1 had a Mac function key at least - but not the rest of it. It's now discontinued. https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/nutype-f1

Is there anything else?

Would it be hard to DIY?

I got a keychron keyboard with 4 layers of key settings. 0,1 for Mac and 2,3 for windows. I'm using it on a Mac but I really can't stand the Mac key bindings. is there a way to remap the keys with via so that it works like on windows?

Hello,

I want to share my personal experience with my first Keychron keyboard.

TL;DR: It is amazing, but so it was so painful to configure...

EDIT1: Ok So I think that all my troubles come from the fact I thought I had FR ISO layout, which is not right. I have a french MAC layout (I don't know the official name, I mean the same layout as french MAC layout). The other issue is that the left physical OPT key (the only one) is in fact the right OPT key, so I had to change the configuration to be the right key instead of the left. Then with a ABC-AZERTY as input source in MACOS, it si working correctly.

I use a macbook pro (Sequoia) and my keyboard is Keychron Q1 pro with a french ISO layout. The keyboard is configured in MAC mode. I thought naively that everything would have worked out of the box... I was far from the truth.

I bought it because I knew that the build quality was amazing, I knew that the configuration was really powerful, I knew that a mechanical keyboard is just another game compare to a classical keyboard and I was right. But I bought it also because it was clearly written on Keychron web site that it was apple compatible and honestly I disagree. Some might say I am wrong, because now it is working, so it is compatible, but when I read that it is compatible I am waiting that everything is working out of the box. That was not the case. I am okay to suffer if I want a very specific configuration, I am okay to spend days trying to configure a very complex macro, but I think spending days to just be able to type some characters such as |, \, [, ], {, }... is a problem. It is something that is basically what I am waiting from a keyboard without complex configuration. Honestly I don't care whose fault is it: apple? my exotic layout? I bought a compatible keyboard to keychron that was a pain to configure in order to get basic functionality (I do not even talk about key #@ and <> that are swapped).

Now, because I do not want to post only an angriness message, here is what I did to make everything work like I wanted. I am really not an expert in that domain, so do not take what I write as the best thing to do. Maybe I did bad, maybe it is working by chance, probably there is a better way to achieve the same thing in more efficient way.

First I was very surprised that very few people had the same issue than me. Maybe am I unlucky? Maybe there was an evident thing to do to make everything work and I missed it? I do not know, and a feedback from the community would be very appreciated :)

I first used the webapp VIA. My first goal was to be able to have the | character with Fn+L (in my day to day job, it is mandatory). So naively I configured my Layer 1 and configured the key |\. The result was that everytime I clicked Fn+L the character ``` was written. Why? I don't know. Is it due to the fact that I am not able to configure VIA app to know which is my current layout? Is is because my input keyboard in MACOS is the wrong one (there are very few AZERTY layout, I tried all of them without any success)?

So I decided to work at keycode level rather than key level, because obviously it is not working. In order to be sure that what I send with the keyboard is what I received at OS level, I used the app called Key codes. It basically output what keycode was received. My strategy was to get the keycode from my keyboard laptop when I press Opt+Shift+L which produces |.

Key Down
Characters: |
Unicode: 124 / 0x7c
Keys: ⌥⇧L
Key Code: 37 / 0x25
Modifiers: 655682 / 0xa0142

My understanding is that the keycode sent is 0x25. So I configured using VIA->Special->Any, to send keycode 0x25. Once configured the character produced is !. Very close to be a | according to my daughter, but still too far for my needs. What is interesting is that the key code received is 0x1c. So my first conclusion is that the keycode sent (at least what I think to be a keycode) is different from what is received. It starts to be pleasing.

I tried a new path by creating my own custom layout on MACOS using the ukelele app. Basically from my understanding, this application allows you to create keyboard layout at operating system level. You can then export it and copy the bundle file to ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts. Then in the keyboard configuration settings of MACOS, you can select this new layout as an input source. In order to take effect, you might have to logout/login. Sometimes it is not necessary, sometimes it is (I love determinism).

Thanks to ukelele, I successfully changed some mapping and it was a big step further because I started to be able to have something coherent from the VIA app to the MACOS keyboard layout. However, I was not able to use OPT modifier for an unknown reason. I mean, that every key configured in ukelele with OPT down was not working, none... After some hours of digging, I realised that my only one OPT key on my physical keyboard (which is on the left of the keyboard) was in fact considered as the right OPT key in ukulele. So I configured through the VIA app my left OPT key to act as the right OPT key. From that point, everything started to work as it was supposed to work, at least in my though. I then configured with VIA my layer 1 to send RALT(KC-N) (I tried so many syntaxes to finally get that one...) and ukelele to output a | when OPT+L was pressed. For the first time since days, I was able to print a | with my Q1 Pro, using the combination keys I wanted. I thought my issues were behind... but not yet, it would have been too easy.

Because I want also to be able to write a \ (yeah I know I want so many things that I am like a spoiled child). So I used exactly the same steps than for my lovely |, but for unknown reason VIA app is always changing my RALT(KC_SLASH) to RALT(KC_NO). So I am still able to produce a \ with OPT+/ but not yet with Fn+/.

My conclusions:

This keyboard is amazing, I love it. However, the configuration has to be easier. I did not find any tutorial (I'm not saying it does not exist) to help people using this kind of keyboard. My feeling is that keychron should provide at least a tutorial and even better some configuration file to install on our operating system. Did I miss something?

Even if it sill not perfect, because I am still unable to output a \ with my preferred combination key, I am confident that I will be able to overcome my next issues.

I did this post first to be sure that there is no better way to do what I did, but also to help people that could have the same issues than me.

And to finish, just because I can do that, I offer you some characters I am finally able to output with my new keyboard: |, {, }, [, ], ~.

Kind regards