The Confusing Evolution of Apple's Fn/Globe Key: A Design Without Direction

I don't know what Apple's endgame is for the Fn/Globe key, and I'm not sure Apple knows either. Every modifier key starts simple and humble, with a specific task and a nice matching name. This never lasts. The tasks become larger and more convoluted, and the labels grow obsolete. Shift no longer shifts a carriage, Control doesn't send control codes, Alt isn't for alternate terminal functions. Fn is the newest popular modifier key, and it feels we're speedrunning it through all the challenges without having learned any of the lessons.

The Humble Beginnings

The first Fn key that mattered arrived with IBM's 1984 PCjr, perhaps the most cursed and ridiculed computer in history. PCjr was envisioned as a home version of the massively popular 1981 PC and its revered Model F keyboard. Depending on how you look at it, PCjr's keyboard was cut to hell for reasons of either cost or simplicity. Its key count – 21 fewer than the PC – was similar to the Macintosh's keyboard that debuted just two months earlier.

The solution was the Fn key, put in the upper right corner, meant to bring back from the dead the missing keys by making the surviving ones pretend to be them. The system was color-coded in a neat way that was easy to understand. FnP would do the same as PrtSc on the larger keyboard, Fn6 would simulate F6, and so on.

Most importantly for our conversation, the Fn key was resolved internally inside the keyboard. When you pressed FnS, the keyboard would not report those two keys to the host computer. Instead, it would only send an event for the ghost key it represented, Scroll Lock. To the computer, it really seemed like the missing key was there.

The Laptop Era

When laptop companies didn't have a choice about keyboard size, the Fn convention stuck. Machines from Compaq, IBM, Psion, and Zenith all adopted similar approaches. Fn was used to make keys pretend they're Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, plus a few more rare keys like Break or PrtSc.

But nature abhors a vacuum, freeways generate traffic, and keys end up being given more work. Fn's tasks were quickly expanded to simulate the numeric keypad, or the newer and oft-omitted F11 and F12 keys. Then, designers realized that the "computer operation" shortcuts could benefit from being assigned to Fn rather than the more cumbersome CtrlAlt prefix.

Standardization was indeed rare. Swapping to an external display was FnEnd on a Toshiba, FnPrtSc on an HP, and FnF5 on a different HP model. HP also allowed FnSpace to mute the system, while on European versions of Tandy 1000FD, the same combination acted as the missing backslash and pipe key.

Apple's Keyboard Journey

Apple's path ended up going in the opposite direction from Microsoft. The beginnings with the 1983's Lisa and the 1984's Mac were great in their simplicity: Shift was too well-known to mess with, but the other two keys were called Command (for invoking commands) and Option (for alternate keys).

But what followed was a series of blunders. The 1986 keyboard, compatible with both Apple IIgs and the Mac, put the Apple logo on the same key as "⌘". This was meant to help users from each platform, but the end result was catastrophic: since the ⌘ symbol didn't have an intuitive generic name, now Mac users started thinking of the command key as "the Apple key."

Most crucially, both keyboards introduced a new tenant: Control (⌃). This was modifier key number four, and to this day, I don't fully understand why ⌘ wasn't repurposed here, and Apple just slapped on another modifier key with a very similar purpose.

On the Mac, the Fn key first appeared with the 1997 PowerBook G3 – color-coordinated as other laptops have been doing, and offering similar functionality. Over the next decade, as the internet explosion caused computers to reach more and more casual consumers, the internal numeric keypad emulation disappeared, and in 2007 Apple's smaller notebook-like keyboard became available for desktop computers as well.

The Dictation Complication

In 2012, with the release of Mac OS Mountain Lion, Apple crossed a line no edition of the key attempted before: one of the signature releases of the operating system allowed you to tap Fn twice to enable dictation.

From a user's standpoint, it was a nice and convenient gesture. But for the first time, this was Fn key doing a regular key's work. Previously, Fn's tasks were either related to computer hardware and something the operating system never knew about (screen brightness, volume, and so on), or otherwise the signals sent to the computer were of the other keys Fn was resurrecting.

But here, there was no dictation key to simulate. The Fn key itself had a personality it had to announce to the operating system. This worked within the closed proprietary confines of Apple's keyboards built-in and external. But it immediately complicated things for third-party keyboards.

The Globe Key Emerges

The globe key existed on iPhone's onscreen keyboard ever since November 2007. The second domino was iPad Pro's release in 2015. Prior official iPad keyboards didn't have an Fn key, but the magnetic Smart Keyboard arrived with a key in the lower left corner with a completely new symbol: 🌐.

The globe key allowed to switch between keyboard layouts, one of which included a useful emoji keyboard during the peak of emoji's cultural relevance. In 2019 and 2020, the Globe key crossed over: the new MacBooks started adding the globe icon alongside the existing "Fn" label and allowing to access keyboard layouts the same way.

But it was 2021 where an enormous new piece of a puzzle dropped. It turned out that this was a different story. Twenty-seven years since Microsoft did so, Apple too wanted a Windows-style key that only they could control. Suddenly, the globe key on the iPad and the hybrid globe/Fn key on the Mac were equipped with a million Windows-like tasks: 🌐C to activate Control Center, 🌐A to show the dock, 🌐N for Notification Center, and so on.

The Third-Party Keyboard Problem

Apple kept their new 🌐/Fn key close to their chest – only Apple keyboards and selected partners were allowed to generate the right code. This resulted in a complex scenario where Logitech keyboards for the iPad had a functioning 🌐 key, but other Logitech keyboards came with this warning:

The Fn key on Logitech keyboards, when connected to macOS or iOS, functions differently from the Fn/Globe key on Apple. [...] Logitech keyboards do not send the Fn/Globe key keycode in a manner that is compatible with Apple's specific shortcuts. As a result, certain Apple functions, such as window tiling and other shortcuts reliant on the Fn/Globe key, are not supported by our keyboards.

It wasn't just people complaining – now it seemed even Apple's partners were. In 2012, the problem of a key combination that didn't sometimes exist or didn't sometimes work was limited to dictation. In 2021, Apple extended the blast radius, and since added even more 🌐 shortcuts for window management – but ignored all of the original problems.

What's the Solution?

What is Apple's way out of this? I have no idea. What is there right now is not sustainable. I use a third-party keyboard and I'm seeing shortcuts in menu items that I simply cannot press: Sometimes they use the "🌐" symbol, sometimes they say "fn" – but the latter doesn't work for external keyboards where Fn still means something it meant since 1984.

Many gaming keyboards have a "game mode" that disables the ⊞ modifier key which, pressed alone and by accident, ejects people from the game onto Windows desktop. Deliciously, in some keyboards, game mode is activated by… holding Fn+⊞.

Another option is Apple managing to convince keyboard manufacturers to add a 🌐 key everywhere, and treat it as a new modifier key. But even then, I imagine many keyboard manufactures will still want a traditional Fn key they can fully control. After all, many keyboards are their own computers now; my mechanical keyboard dedicates a lot of Fn shortcuts to internal actions like switching layers, controlling backlight, and Bluetooth connectivity.

Beyond the Key Itself

This matters to me and feels bigger than just Fn, because I know keyboards can help you use your computer in better ways than you might imagine. Doug Engelbart's demos, combined with experiences of typists and musicians before him, showed us that this actually works. That you can offload a lot of menial stuff to faraway parts of your brain. That you can use your keyboard and achieve flow without thinking about what you're doing.

But this cannot happen with millions of modifier keys packed like sardines in a box. Early electronic typewriters from IBM understood it with large keys like Code, and NeXT in 1992 even experimented with a long ⌘ bar below the spacebar for the same reason. But look what happened to the Mac since 1986: the space around space is a zero-sum game. Purely ergonomically, Fn makes the other keys smaller and harder to press.

One new of anything means more cognitive load. Fluid and natural keyboard use cannot blossom when a system of modifiers and shortcuts is confusing, inconsistent even between platforms that Apple controls, and when any time you use a third-party keyboard, some keys are unavailable, and some menus lie to you. How can you trust a system that doesn't fully work? How can you understand a system that doesn't understand itself?

Apple's Opportunity

There was a time when Acorn, creators of generally beloved computers, was called "the British Apple." Interestingly, Acorn Electron in 1983 had an Fn key not to simulate other keys, but to speed up issuing commands – and they put it on the Caps Lock key, because even in 1983, we already knew Caps Lock didn't deserve the large size nor the central location.

Apple, you're breaking my heart with all this keyboard stuff, and so I'm telling you this with spite: You can do it. If you apply yourself, you can become the American Acorn.

Apple's keyboard confusion represents more than just a design quirk. It's a symptom of a company that has lost its way in input design, creating complexity without clear benefit. The path forward requires either simplification – reducing modifier keys and their inconsistent behaviors – or a coherent, well-communicated strategy that works across all keyboards, not just Apple's own.