---
title: "Mac: keyboard shortcut to enable and disable function keys"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2013/1/22/mac-keyboard-shortcut-to-enable-and-disable-function-keys.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2013/1/22/mac-keyboard-shortcut-to-enable-and-disable-function-keys.html"
published: "2013-01-22T12:46:02"
updated: "2013-01-22T12:46:02"
tags: []
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I work a lot with visual studio in a virtual machine, and on a mac, the function keys just get in the way of debugging and what not. I needed a way to quickly enable and disable the mac function keys. Found my solution…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Mac: keyboard shortcut to enable and disable function keys

By Roy Osherove January 22, 2013

**Historical article** · Originally published January 22, 2013; technical details may be outdated.

I work a lot with visual studio in a virtual machine, and on a mac, the function keys just get in the way of debugging and what not.

I needed a way to quickly enable and disable the mac function keys. [Found my solution over here](http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=932342):

Get FastScripts [http://www.red-sweater.com/fastscripts/](http://www.red-sweater.com/fastscripts/)
and one of these AppleScripts depending on your OS version
Leopard:
[http://www.mediafire.com/file/uznnoommljk/](http://www.mediafire.com/file/uznnoommljk/)
Snow Leopard (works on my mountain lion too):
[http://www.mediafire.com/file/2eeywh2ejku/](http://www.mediafire.com/file/2eeywh2ejku/)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/