FunctionFlip on OSX Yosemite

Those of you who have read my previous post Google Music & Hype Machine keyboard controls on Mac OSX will know that I use a neat little tool called FunctionFlip so that I don’t have to hold the fn key to use the F1 through F12 keys.

Unfortunately I recently upgraded to OSX Yosemite and found that FunctionFlip no longer worked. It complained that it needed me to “Enable access for assistive devices” in the system preferences. OXS Yosemite does not have that feature. Hmm.

Anyhow, I manages to figure it out. The process is hard to explain but easy to do so I have created a video guide – it only takes 2 minutes.

Please note that I am assuming that you have installed FunctionFlip 2.2.2 already.

Enjoy 🙂

UPDATE 14-01-2015:

The above solution works great, however I found that after a reboot FunctionFilp was not working and required me to manually stop it and start it again from the preferences.

Miro in the comments below was facing the same problem and his investigation led me to a solution:

  1. Navigate to Macintosh HD/Library/PreferencePanes/
  2. Move FunctionFlip.prefPane to somewhere like your Desktop
  3. Double-click on FunctionFlip.prefPane to re-install it.
  4. Reboot and check that FunctionFlip is working 🙂

Many thanks to Miro for helping to get to this solution and please let me know in the comments if it works for you.

Category: How To     Tags: ,

20 Comments on “FunctionFlip on OSX Yosemite”

  1. Thanks for posting this! I just worked out the solution myself and then Googled to see if anyone else was having the same problem and came across your post. For my own future reference (and consistent with your video), here’s what I wrote for myself:

    “After the upgrade to Yosemite, FunctionFlip 2.2.2 (http://kevingessner.com/software/functionflip/) would not start up and redirected to System Preference – Security & Privacy – Privacy – Accessibility but there was nothing there to enable FunctionFlip.

    Resolved by clicking “+” and then selecting /Library/PreferencePanes/FunctionFlip.prefPane/Contents/Resources/FunctionFlip.app and then adding it. Nothing additional shows up in the enabled items but it works! There is no longer any complaint when starting up FunctionFlip.”

    Reply

  4. Thank you. I started by contacting the developer of FunctionFlip but never got a reply. I’ve been looking for a solution since the official release of Yosemite but could not find one. Amazingly, even with Yosemite in the search criteria I was getting 2009 links…. Today, your solution popped up near the top. I would like to make 1 recommendation, use a video recording app like Screeny which highlights where you click or make the mouse bigger via the accessibility settings

    Reply

  5. Charles, thanks for the video. Kevin Gessner, the author of FunctionFlip, has pointed me to your video guide. Now it works again, hooray! 🙂

    Reply

  7. I’ve done all of this but I am still getting the ‘Enable access for assistive devices’ error on startup and I need to manually turn FF off and then back on in order to get it working. I do already have ‘Start FF at Login’ checked. Anyone else run into this problem?

    Reply

    • Hey,
      I was having a similar problem (although I wasn’t getting the ‘Enable access for assistive devices’ error) but have just now resolved it. I have updated the guide above with the solution.

      Hope it helps,
      Charlie

      Reply

  9. Kevin got me here, so I figured I’d leave a reply and say thanks!

    However, it wasn’t all fun and games, even after following the instructions. FF worked, but only if it was manually started/stopped after a restart — otherwise it wouldn’t function, even though it was in “started” mode. However, I bungled through a fix.

    I navigated to /Library/PreferencePanes/ and saw that there were two FunctionFlips — the original, as well as a duplicate copy (FunctionFlip-2.prefPane). I deleted both, and installed a fresh, third copy that I downloaded today (FunctionFlip-3.prefPane).

    *However*, I then received a “FF is from an unidentified developer” message, preventing it from running at all. So I deleted the third, newest copy, and instead found the original FunctionFlip.prefPane in my Downloads folder. Installing the original file made the program work properly — it now enables automatically after a restart.

    I don’t know if the error was due to having two copies of FF in that folder — it may very well have been. So if others are encountering the same problem, try navigating to that folder and deleting the duplicate, if one exists.

    Good luck!

    Reply

  10. I don’t know if I’m the only one experiencing this, but I haven’t been able to find an answer anywhere else, and since the developer references this page, I think this might be the best place. I’m only seeing F1-F6 in FunctionFlip, 2.2.2. Anyone else? I see all the keys in 2.1, but just those 6 keys when I update (all is well though with the scripts though, I can press fn+command+F8 to play all the musiks.)

    Reply

  12. Had the same problem but couldn’t get past the “Unidentified Developer” part.

    Figured out I had to manually add FunctionFlip to Gatekeeper by this command:
    spctl –add –label “FunctionFlip” /Library/PreferencePanes/FunctionFlip.prefPane/Contents/Resources/FunctionFlip.app/

    Reply

  14. Nope, and I gave up on this years ago. Would really like it back though.

    I realized that the workaround is to disable all the F keys and then make custom hotkeys to get the volume, brightness, next track stuff working again. Possible with Alfred or Quicksilver maybe, but having FunctionFlip working again would be much better

    Reply

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