After years of exclusively using Linux at work, I now have to work on a new MacBook Pro. While a nice machine, I do miss Linux. And also the keyboard layout I use for almost 20 years. So I decided to re-create the us_de keyboard layout for Linux on macOS.
The standard suggestion online is to use Ukelele to create your own layout. However, for now I do not have permissions to install software on that MacBook. Luckily, it is fairly straightforward to create your own *.keylayout file. Still - I used ChatGPT to aid in the creation. To install the file, simply copy it to
~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/and then select it under 'Others' in the macOS keyboard selection menu. Then log out and in again to activate it.
Here is the file: de_us.keylayout
Similar to the Linux version, it is a standard US keyboard layout, with
All other mappings are preserved.
This gives me all the benefits of well placed keys (such as curly braces and brackets) for programming, and easy access to all German umlauts.