What is the "fn" Key used for????

I just noticed that I have never used the "fn" key on my mac.
What is it for? Who uses it most?

 

function. to use the other function of a key. so instead of hitting the F2 key to make it brighter, you hold fn to atually USE F2, not brightness control. you also use it with the arrow keys to page up, down, use home, and end. Option is also "alt" and return is also "enter" with the fn key.

example: in FFXI the F keys are mapped to a party member (1-6). If I just press F2 it'll be brightness control for my screen. If I hold fn and press F2 it will target the party member mapped to F2.

 

Is that all its used for?

Oh and nice sig. =)

 

Yep, that's the purpose of the key. If you look at other laptops, you'll see that most of them have it too, since most laptops dont have that number pad + square section with the page, home, and end buttons, so they use this key to just give other keys on the keyboard the same function in order to make up for the missing keys.

Also notice that theres numbers on the keys to the right. Hold down fn, or use num lock in order to use those keys as a kind of slanted number pad.

And thanks

 

Maybe it's different on a PC...

But on a PC you use can the Fn key for changing the volume, screen brightnes, taking a screen shot, ejecting a disc, turning on your wireless card, number pad, etc. It depends on the PC (Dell, Lenovo, etc).

I would think Mac also makes use of this.

 

The functionality is the same. It's just that Macs ship with the F-keys set to hardware function keys by default, so you don't need to hold Fn to lower volume, numlock, change screens, etc. On the other hand, you'll need to hold Fn to use the software bindings for the F-keys. You can reverse this easily in Sys. Preferences though.

You can do the same in Windows via Boot Camp as well, although I find that Windows software tend to make use of the F-keys more, so I usually set those to their software bindings instead.

 

fn + up/down arrow is page up and down while fn + left/right is home and end on a Macbook.

 

It also doubles as the "any" key.

 

this is actually quite useful in many different pro apps, After Effects specifically.

pg up and down, move forward and back frame by frame, and home and end go to the beginning and end of your composition, which are very important keyboard shortcuts.

also, some people need to use the F keys as actual F1-12 keys for programs like Maya, etc. so they set the keyboard to be setup to use the Fn key to change brightness, volume, etc. similar to many PC keyboards.

 

Yea, I think you may not have used it because many mac programs don't need/have fuctions set to the f keys.

Although in windows many programs use the f keys.

The weird thing that I noticed is that the wired keyboard from apple has f keys up to 19 or something. ( I forget the actual number), but yea I dont really see the point to that in osx, but maybe it has some use.

 

yeah it goes up to F19, you could tie shortcuts to those keys, which could be quite useful actually.

i love my aluminum keyboard so much, I will be using this one for many many years to come.