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pkeller
Contributor
Contributor
‎11-24-2022 10:23 AM

Fusion 13 / Win11 : cannot install BootCamp keyboard layouts

I use the Swiss/French keyboard, and am trying to get the full Mac layout in Windows 11, including the Option keys commonly used for programming.

I followed the procedure in the article Using an alternate keyboard layout for a virtual machine in VMware Fusion, supplemented with the command-line method to install the BootCamp drivers, msiexec /i BootCamp.msi, described here. However, when I try to add the keyboard in Windows (Settings > Time & Language > Language & Region > Options), I do not see the promised "... (Apple)" keyboards. I do have the "French (Switzerland)" language pack installed. 

I don't quite understand step 4 of the instructions, "Find the language you want, and expand the language and keyboard set." That doesn't seem to work that way in Windows 11?

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

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pkeller
Contributor
Contributor
‎11-24-2022 02:41 PM

Update: I ended up creating my own keyboard layout using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator :

  • Open Apple's Character Viewer (Edit > Emoji & Symbols).
  • Click in the Search box and type the special character you want (e.g. "@").
  • Right-click on the search result and "Copy Character Info".
  • Paste that into a text editor and copy just the Unicode number ("U+...").
  • Paste the Unicode number into Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator.

It's a royal pain, but it works – perhaps someone knows an easier way? If anyone wants a Mac-style Swiss-French layout, I'm more than willing to share!

If you tried following VMware's instructions and want to clean up, you can uninstall the BootCamp drivers like so: msiexec /x BootCamp.msi.

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