Keyboard mapping on Mac hardware

I apologise if this has been asked hundreds of times before. I feel it must have been, but I can't find a solution that works! I have installed Zorin Pro on an elderly Macbook. I am trying to get it to mimic the standard Apple keyboard shortcuts. Most importantly CMD-C for copy and CMD-V for paste.

I have looked at Settings/Keyboard Shortcuts, but I can't find any specific settings for this. When I try to add a custom shortcut, it recognises the CMD key as "Super", but when I put in the Commands "Copy" and "Paste" it doesn't do anything. I have tried using Gnome Tweaks, but I can't find anything that can do this.

I can't help but feel that I must be overlooking something very obvious, I would appreciate any pointers though.

If you use dconf-editor

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Under org > gnome > desktop > wm > keybindings, do you see any shortcuts for copy and paste?
If not or if so - can you add or replace with your preferred keypresses?

Thanks, I have installed this. However, I don't see any keybindings for either copy or paste, or any options to add extra keybindings.

After a lot of googling, and a bit of guessing I have found a workaround, although it is a bit klunky and not ideal. I use gsettings to set the the gnome gtk-key-theme to 'Mac' (i.e. gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme 'Mac').

This maps all Mac key combinations to the ALT key rather than the CMD key that Mac OS uses, but since the keys are right next to each other this is good enough. This works with all apps that I have tried, with one important exception - Gnome Terminal. That seems to keep its own record of key bindings and they need to be set one at a time using Terminal/Preferences/Shortcuts.

This all seems to survive a reboot, so I can live with it.

1 Like

I tentatively marked your solution, but we can revisit this if a better solution is found.

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.