For years after moving from Windows to Mac, I used Karabiner to make my trusty Logitech S510 keyboard act normal in OS X, at least normal from an ex-Windows users perspective. Karabiner also had the added benefit of allowing a standard PC keyboard to mimic other keys, such as the MacBook Eject key. For example, I could bind the eject function to Print Screen, allowing Ctrl + Shift + Print Screen to lock my MacBook quickly from the keyboard.

After a time, my Windows habits slowly faded and OS X became first nature to me. I found myself rarely using any of the PC key-bindings, preferring native Mac functionality. The final straw came with macOS Sierra, which broke Karabiner once and for all. The only feature I missed was the ability to bind PC keys to functions such as Eject. Yes, there are other utilities available, such as Keyboard Maestro , but they seemed like overkill, and I didn’t want any external dependencies.

After some research, I discovered the ability in macOS to bind Automator scripts to a shortcut in the Keyboard System Preferences panel. For example, I could create a simple Automator script to run the following AppleScript block. This script will open the standard macOS shutdown prompt as if I had pressed Ctrl + Eject on my MacBook keyboard.

on run {input, parameters}
	tell application "loginwindow" to «event aevtrsdn»
end run

Once I saved this Automator script in the Services folder (~/Library/Services/), it could be bound to a shortcut key combination in Keyboard Preferences under Shortcuts, Services. See the screenshot below for an example of several I have setup on my own system.

Keyboard Services System Preferences

Another advantage to this solution is that it works everywhere, whether I’m working on my MacBook keyboard, or any old PC keyboard I happen to have plugged in.

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