How to Fix Print Screen on Mac Keyboards in Omarchy

29 Aug 2025 |

You’ve just set up your sleek new Omarchy system, and you plug in your favorite keyboard, like a Keychron. You flip it into “Mac mode” because the keycaps match your layout, but when you press the Print Screen key… the app moves to a new screen.

TL;DR

The Problem: When a Key Isn’t Just a Key

The first step in fixing a problem is understanding it. In our case, the Print Screen key on a Keychron K3 in “Mac mode” wasn’t sending a simple Print signal. To figure out what it was sending, we used keyd’s built-in diagnostic tool.

After installing keyd, we ran its monitor command (sudo keyd monitor). When we pressed the problematic key, the monitor showed us the truth: a single press was sending a sequence of three keys at once: leftshift, leftmeta, and 4.

This is the standard macOS shortcut to take a screenshot of a selected area. The keyboard’s firmware was literally typing a Mac shortcut, which our Linux system didn’t know what to do with.

The Solution: `keyd`, the Universal Translator

Simple remapping tools couldn’t fix this, as they struggled to intercept a multi-key combination. The solution was to use keyd, a powerful, low-level daemon that can remap keys and combinations before your desktop environment even sees them.

Here’s how we used it to translate the macOS shortcut into a proper Print Screen event.

Step 1: Install and Enable `keyd`

First, we installed keyd and enabled its background service.

sudo pacman -S keyd
sudo systemctl enable --now keyd

Step 2: Get Your Keyboard’s Info with `keyd monitor`

Next, we need to find the keyboard’s hardware ID and diagnose the key press. The keyd monitor command does both at the same time.

sudo keyd monitor

The monitor will list all connected devices. Look for your keyboard in the list. The output will look like this:

device added: 05ac:024f:f110753b Keychron Keychron K3 (/dev/input/event4)

From this single line, we get the vendor and product ID: 05ac:024f.

With the monitor still running, press the problematic key to confirm what it sends.

Step 3: Create the Configuration File

Now, create a configuration file in /etc/keyd/. It’s good practice to name it after the device.

sudo nvim /etc/keyd/your-keyboard.conf

Step 4: Write the Remapping Rule

This is where the magic happens. Inside the file, we set up two sections:

[ids]: Tells keyd which device(s) this rule applies to. We use the ID from keyd monitor.
[main]: Defines the actual remapping.

We tell keyd to look for the leftmeta+leftshift+4 combination and replace it with sysrq, which is the kernel’s internal name for the Print Screen key.

# /etc/keyd/your-keyboard.conf
# (Run: sudo keyd monitor to discover <vendor>:<product> and the exact combo)

[ids]
<vendor>:<product>    # optional – delete this whole block to apply globally

[main]
leftmeta+leftshift+4 = sysrq

Step 5: Reload and Test

With the configuration saved, a final command applies the changes without needing a reboot:

sudo keyd reload

And just like that, the Print Screen key will start working perfectly, triggering all the screenshot hotkeys already configured on your system.

Why This Works

This method is so effective because keyd works at a very low level. It intercepts the raw input from the keyboard, finds a match in your configuration, and sends a new, corrected event to the rest of the OS. To your desktop and all other applications, it looks as if you pressed a normal Print Screen key all along.