Unable to get iHome Bluetooth keyboard working properly with macOS
The model name is IMACK134. I bought it at Walmart. They're sold elsewhere of course.
So, I can connect it through Bluetooth to the Mac just fine, but I get the "cannot be identified" prompt:
When I click "Continue", it asks me to tap the key immediately to the right right of the Shift key (which would be the Z key), so I tap that, and a drop-down box appears that says the keyboard can't be identified:
2nd screenshot:
If I click OK, that drop-down window disappears, then tapping any key goes "bonk". The only thing I can do is close the box, go to Mac Settings > Keyboard > Change Keyboard Type, which pops up the "cannot be identified" box again, then after hitting Z, pressing "Skip"... and then I can select ANSI (US type) which I did... but the keyboard still has some problems.
The Command and Option keys are switched... even though they're labeled like an Apple keyboard, including having the icons. I have to go into keyboard settings and switch the modifier keys.
Another problem is that the tic/tilde key prints § (or with Shift prints ±)... I haven't found how to change this in settings, or even which button(s) will print the tic or tilde! There seems to be some solutions online for this (like Alt+N but the keyboard has no Alt button), but they seem to print a weird underlined tilde or something else that looks like a different character.
Has anyone else actually tried this keyboard?! I mean, it's built for Mac, obviously; it's called "iHome" (a reference to iMac), its model name has IMACK in it, and its button labels match Mac keyboards... I'm just blown away that this doesn't work out of the box. I realize it's also compatible with Windows, but it seems to be behaving worse with a Mac than the keyboards I've tried that were built with Windows-first in mind that also mention they're compatible with Mac.
Here's the keyboard:
Note that I'm not trying to advertise the keyboard or a certain store (and pointing out problems with it is not good advertising).
I'll be happy to get an Apple keyboard... but I really was expecting the iHome people to have used their own keyboard with Mac enough to not have these kinds of problems without an easy solution somewhere. The manual doesn't mention any of these issues.
61 Answer
I could only fix this for the iHome keyboard using two things:
- Mac system settings for Keyboards, setting the keyboard as ANSI (US) in Setup Bluetooth Keyboard.
- Using Karabiner-Elements settings for the keyboard to fix the strange key assignments (may require special permissions in Mac settings, such as being able to read your keystrokes).
This works on macOS Catalina and Big Sur.
It's too bad it needs 3rd-party software or special permissions to work right; it's kind of ridiculous that a keyboard made by "iHome", meant for Macs primarily, and that has Mac-specific key characters painted on the keys just doesn't work out of the box without external software from another provider. Nothing like this is mentioned in the manual. I'd be just fine if iHome disappeared from my perception at this point.
