Apple keyboard drivers for windows 10

tl;dr:

1. Download and extract the Apple Boot Camp drivers I repackaged: BootCamp-061-51481.zip
2. Right-click BootCamp/Drivers/Apple/AppleKeyboardMagic2/Keymagic2.inf (or BootCamp/Drivers/Apple/AppleKeyboard/Keymagic64.inf or appropriate driver) and then «Install».
3. Unplug and re-plugin your keyboard.
4. If you want to reverse the fn key behavior, change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior from 01 to 00. Restart for registry changes to take effect.

If those drivers don’t work, try getting latest from the source:

1. Download latest exe from Brigadier release page.
2. Find the latest or a current Mac model (ex: MacBookPro16,3).
3. Run brigadier.exe -m MacBookPro16,3 to download Apple Boot Camp drivers.

If you can’t or don’t want to use Brigadier, see the bottom of this post.

Note: I have not tested this over Bluetooth. I keep my keyboard connected via the supplied lightning to USB cable.

I recently acquired an Apple Magic Keyboard and wanted to use it on my PC. It worked when I plugged it in but I could not access any of the media keys/fn keys (ex: volume up and down). This is because Windows was using the default keyboard drivers.

When I first started looking for solutions I found hacky, unsigned drivers and key mappers. These were not ideal.

Apple actually does supply Windows drivers for Apple Keyboards, Apple Magic Keyboards, and apparently other Apple Mouse and Trackpad devices. Apple created these for Boot Camp (a program that allows you to run Windows in a virtual machine in OSX). However, there is not an easy way to access them. Normally, Apple wants you to download and install a large suite of software and drivers meant for Boot Camp which will do all kinds of nasty things to your PC. Thankfully, the keyboard and other drivers can be isolated and installed independently.

Download Boot Camp Drivers

If you want to skip this section, you can download the drivers I extracted from the bellow process and see if they work for you: BootCamp-061-51481.zip

Because we are not going through Boot Camp, the first challenge is getting access to the Boot Camp drivers. The easiest way to do so is to use the Brigadier program. This automatically locates the URL for a given Mac model and downloads and extracts the appropriate Boot Camp drivers. If you can’t or don’t want to use this program, see the bottom of this post.

Download the latest exe from the releases page and run it like so:

brigadier.exe -m MacBookPro16,3

MacBookPro16,3 is the model of the latest MacBook Pro (at the time of writing) which I got from this page. I used this model because I wanted to ensure I got the latest drivers.

This will create a folder next to brigadier.exe named something like BootCamp-061-51481. The numbers in the name will be whatever version of Boot Camp drivers were downloaded.

Install Drivers

Navigate to BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleKeyboardMagic2 for Apple Magic Keyboard drivers. I have not tested this, but I assume you would use BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleKeyboard for other Apple Keyboards. Or, $WinPEDriver$\AppleMultiTouchTrackPadPro for Apple Magic Trackpad 2, etc. I don’t think there is any harm in installing more drivers than you need as only the appropriate ones will be used, but that is also untested.

Right-click Keymagic2.inf (or whichever .inf file exists for your driver) and then «Install» to install the driver.

After installation is complete, unplug and re-plugin your keyboard. If everything worked, you should be able to use the Volume Up/F12 (without holding the fn key) and the Volume will change. To debug, check in device manager; «Apple Keyboard» should be listed under «Human Interface Devices».

Change fn Key Behavior

By default, when the fn key is not held, the media keys will be activated. When the fn keys is held the F1-12 keys will be activated.

To reverse the fn key behavior, open RegEdit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\KeyMagic\ and update OSXFnBehavior key from 01 to 00 (in the binary editor this will update from 00000000 01 . to 00000000 00 .).

Not sure if this is necessary, but also navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\KeyMagic\ and make sure the OSXFnBehavior key has the same value.

Restart your PC for the registry changes to take effect.

Poking around in the Boot Camp package, I noticed several other drivers of note. BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleKeyboardInternalUSB may be related to the USB ports on Apple keyboards. There are also some drivers that looked to be related to Apple Mice, Trackpads, Cameras, Displays, etc:

• BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleCamera
• BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleKeyboard
• BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleKeyboardInternalUSB
• BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleKeyboardMagic2
• BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\AppleKeyManager
• $WinPEDriver$\AppleMultiTouchTrackPad
• $WinPEDriver$\AppleMultiTouchTrackPadPro
• $WinPEDriver$\AppleWirelessMouse
• $WinPEDriver$\AppleWirelessTrackpad

This is not a full list of drivers. Just the ones I found interesting. I have not tested any of these. Again. I don’t think there is any harm in installing more drivers than you need as only the appropriate ones will be used, but that is also untested.

Brigadier Alternative

If you can’t or don’t want to use Brigadier, you can manually find, download, and extract the Boot Camp drivers. Brigadier uses this XML file (at the time of writing, subject to change) to locate the correct package. You can do this manually by downloading the XML file, opening it with a text editor, and searching for the BootCampESD.pkg URL with the latest PostDate. Downlad the .pkg file and extract the contents using 7-Zip, WinZip, WinRAR, or any other utility capable of unpacking .pkg and .dmg files:

1. Extract Payload~ from BootCampESD.pkg
2. Extract .\Library\Application Support\BootCamp\WindowsSupport.dmg from Payload~ (this file is actually an archive).
3. Extract the contents of WindowsSupport.dmg

Here are the 7-Zip commands used to accomplish the above:

"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" e -y BootCampESD.pkg
"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" e -y Payload~
"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" x -y WindowsSupport.dmg