What is emit-fn-key-on-macos?

A macOS method for sending a real Fn, or globe, key press from a script or external control. It uses a virtual keyboard device because macOS does not treat an ordinary simulated key event as the Fn key.

Use it when a macro pad, mouse button, or other external control must trigger macOS dictation, emoji picker, Spotlight, or an application's Fn-based push-to-talk action.

It addresses the problem that common keyboard-remapping methods may fail to trigger actions that specifically require Fn. The input describes this as a way to connect external buttons to macOS shortcuts.

emit-fn-key-on-macos — Skill for Claude Code by terrylica

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add terrylica/cc-skills --skill emit-fn-key-on-macos

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/terrylica/cc-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install macro-keyboard, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/emit-fn-key-on-macos/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/emit-fn-key-on-macos)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/emit-fn-key-on-macos"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/emit-fn-key-on-macos/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/emit-fn-key-on-macos"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/emit-fn-key-on-macos.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,414 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits

NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026

How audits are shown

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00038	$0.02414
Opus 5	$0.00019	$0.01207
Sonnet 5	$0.00008	$0.00483
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00241

Measured 7d ago against content hash 7d3fb3df6d0f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

emit-fn-key-on-macos scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 7d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/macro-keyboard/skills/emit-fn-key-on-macos/SKILL.md · 174 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 174 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Emit a Real Fn Key on macOS

Self-Evolving Skill: This skill improves through use. If instructions are wrong, parameters drifted, or a workaround was needed — fix this file immediately, don't defer. Only update for real, reproducible issues.

Macos's Fn key (also called the "globe" key on modern MacBooks) is special. It's not a regular modifier — it carries kCGEventFlagMaskSecondaryFn, a flag that macOS's input subsystem discards if set from userland via CGEventPost. Many "remap anything" tools assume Fn behaves like Cmd / Option / Ctrl and try to emit it via CGEventPost — and silently fail for dictation, Typeless, macOS's dictation shortcut, Spotlight-via-globe, emoji picker, etc.

The only userland path that emits a Fn the kernel accepts is a DriverKit VirtualHIDDevice. Karabiner-Elements ships one. That's why Karabiner is the only FOSS tool for this job in 2026.

When to Use This Skill

User wants a macro-pad button, mouse button, or any external key to trigger:
- Typeless push-to-talk (pushToTalk: "Fn" by default)
- macOS dictation (Fn Fn double-tap, or single-Fn in System Settings)
- Emoji picker (Fn+E)
- Spotlight-via-globe (Fn)
- App-specific Fn combos that don't work when remapped by BTT
User reports "BTT says the shortcut is firing but nothing happens in Typeless"
User tries hidutil property --set with Fn mappings and sees no effect
User flashed QMK/ZMK on a board and Fn emission is broken

Prerequisite Check

# 1. Karabiner-Elements installed (the only userland tool that can emit real Fn)?
test -d /Applications/Karabiner-Elements.app && echo OK || brew install --cask karabiner-elements

# 2. Karabiner has Input Monitoring + Accessibility?
#    System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring → Karabiner = ON
#    System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → Karabiner = ON

# 3. On macOS Sequoia+: privileged daemon approved in Login Items?
#    System Settings → General → Login Items → Allow in the Background
#    → Karabiner-Elements Privileged Daemon = ON
#    Without this, Karabiner's DriverKit VirtualHIDDevice won't load and
#    your Fn remap will silently do nothing.

Read the full file on GitHub · 174 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

7d ago First seen · 174 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A 7d3fb3df6d0f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

emit-fn-key-on-macos is a skill published in the GitHub repository terrylica/cc-skills (73 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 2,414 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-05.

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