Karabiner-elements not work

Karabiner-elements is a powerful, stable yet free keyboard customizer for Mac. You can re-map any key to other key you want. Some users however found it does not work, they can’t use it to remap keys to another on Mac. In this article, we’ll discuss several of the main reason why karabiner-elements fails and how to make it work properly.

Allow apps downloaded from identified developers

In order to protect your device from malware, your Mac is set to block you from opening apps that aren’t downloaded from the Apple App Store. Download this free key mapping software from its official website. Double click to open and install it from Finder.
image

On the bottom left, you’ll see a padlock icon. Click on it and enter your Mac login password. Under “Allow apps to be downloaded from” section, select “App Store and identified developers”.

When you run Karabiner elements for the first time, you will be prompted to enable a system extension from System Preferences >> Security & Privacy >> General. There you will have the option to allow apps downloaded from App Store and identified developers.

Enable keystrokes receiving from other apps

When you see the keystroke receiving prompt, open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Input Monitoring and grant karabiner_grabber and karabiner_observer the access to receive keystrokes from any application. If you can’t find karabiner_grabber here, find and run Karabiner-EventViewer app from the Launchpad first, you should then be able to find it from the Security & Privacy > Privacy > Input Monitoring app list.

Enable keystrokes receiving input monitoring karabiner elements on mac

Remap keyboard for Mac

With Karabiner, you can easily remap every key on your keyboard and program them to do what you want. For example, if you don’t use the Caps Lock key, you can remap it to any other key you want. Open Karabiner Elements Preferences, its Simple modifications tab opens automatically. Click Add item button at the bottom left corner, click to expand the drop-down list in the From key column, and choose caps_lock, then choose the target key you like to map the caps lock to from the To key column.

karabiner elements for Mac - preferences simple modifications
karabiner elements for Mac – simple modifications