In the ongoing commitment to keep use of my trusty old 2012 Macbook Pro, after a battery replacement last May, the latest challenge was the loss of my spacebar.
I did my diligence in watching YouTube videos of various people demonstrating how to pop of the spacebar and clean\inspect. As pried open in the toot above it was pretty grungy with dirt and hair and who knows what.
After cleaning and checking the parts, I popped it back on… not space action. Intermittent, then nada. I did call the shop that redid my battery, but that’s a drive and maybe leaving it there. I tried again last night, finding I could get a space character tapping on the base with a screwdriver tip. I checked all the plastic lifter bits, verified the placement of the little plastic bobber, pressed it back.
Well… i got a few spaces and a few non stop ones, and then– none.
Back to the thinking board, maybe there is some way to map another key trigger space characters. A web search led me to a StackExchange discussion which led me to Karabiner-Elements, a public domain app that is designed to do all kinds of modifications to the Mac keyboard, many I do not know about, but key is that I can map any other key to send a space character. And from their downloads link I could find the old version that works on my OS 10.14 ancient OS.
Okay, this is not an ideal solution as it is taking extra effort to use a different key to be my spacebar, but at least I can use the old machine where all my source code lives and my photos.
So for now the right command key is my new spacebar, thanks to some searching, sifting, and finding some great public domain software.
Featured Image: My own photo of this computer’s well worn keyboard. Why any one would every need such a photo is beyond me, but I release it into the public domain using Creative Commons CC0.
