Remapping Exposé

Published 8 November 04 by Justin French

Apple’s GUI for Exposé preferences doesn’t allow us to use anything greater than F13. I think the reason is to do with volume keys on Apple Laptops, but since I have a full size keyboard, the limitation is a little frustrating.

There are three main Exposé functions (listed in the order which I logically see them):

1. show application windows
2. show all windows
3. show the Desktop

And when I look at my keyboard, F14–F16 are sitting there in a lovely group of three keys above help, home and page up. Nicely placed out of the way, and easy to “feel” without looking down at the keyboard.

So, a quick Google lead me to Mac OSX Hints (a gold mine of information) and this nice discussion.

Whilst the hint itself was a little obscure, the comments were great, and the comment by Designbot told me everything I need to know. So, here’s my instructions in plain English:

1. Open up ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist in Property List Editor.app (make a back-up first to be safe eh?)
2. Navigate to Root/AppleSymbolicHotKeys/ # Change 32/value/parameters/1 (show all windows) to 113 (F15)
3. Change 33/value/parameters/1 (show application windows) to 107 (F14)
4. Change 36/value/parameters/1 (show desktop) to 106 (F16)
5. Save the plist file
6. Log out
7. Log in again
8. Open a few applications and windows and try it out!

I could go one step further and edit the slow version of each function, but I don’t use them.

¹ If you don’t have the plist file, this means you’ve never tweaked the Exposé preferences. Go to System Preferences > Exposé, change any setting, and then the file will be available.