A7721 Bluetooth Keyboard Shortcuts not working on iPad 6th Generation

#1

Hi,

I’ve just got an A7721 Bluetooth Keyboard and am having mixed results with keyboard shortcuts.

It’s a bit hit and miss whether key combinations work.

  • In the Notes app from the Notes list on the left, Note List Search (Command + Option + F) doesn’t work if you use the left Command+Option keys as part of the combination. Right Command+Left Option, Right Command+Right Option and Left Command+Right Option all work fine, but the logical choice does not work at all. It seems pressing Left-Command and Left-Option only sees the Command button being pressed down.

  • No combinations involving using the Command+Shift key work at all in any variation.

  • No combinations involving using the Option+Shift key work at all in any variation.

  • Command + any alphabet letter or square bracket works, but Command+ . or , do not.

The latter three issues I found were occurring using Slack (chat client).

The keyboard was set to iOS (Fn+A).

My guess is that perhaps Apple’s first party keyboard has some magic to determine context and allow certain combinations through but I can’t be sure.

I’m really unhappy though as this makes the keyboard somewhat useless to me, as I really wanted to use it for chatting in Slack.

I’m happy to provide more testing if required (even a Skype video call if you want to do some diagnostics) - physically the keyboard is excellent. I really hope you can get a fix for this.

Many thanks,

Ruairi

#2

Hi @rc55 I’ve seen similar behaviour in the past for shortcuts in iOS. In your iOS settings, can you check if ‘split keyboard’ is enabled or disabled in the keyboard section. If enabled, disable and try your key combinations again…

1 Like
#3

Hi ndalby,

Thank you for your response.

It seems the behaviour is the same with Split Keyboard on and off.

It’d be handy to have an Apple keyboard to test to see if the same thing occurs.

I wonder if Anker have any information about this, I can’t have been the first to see this.

Thanks,

Ruairi

#4

IOS is always a little bit strange.
ITS APPLE🤣
You pay for it.

If something doesn’t work under LINUX
you might not be astonished.
That’s usual. In the older days Nothing worked properly.:persevere:
BUT:
You will get always a helping hand of the great LINUX community.
MAC OS is an open secret, while LINUX is an open source :grin:
But there will be MAC users here who will help you to solve your problems.
We are all here to help.

#5

@rc55 Sorry to hear you are having an issue with this keyboard, I am afraid the issue was caused by the incompatibility, and it cannot be solved by any settings. Be assured that Anker always take customer experience as a top concern and we really want to help in this case. Therefore, could you please contact us via support@anker.com? Our friendly customer service professionals are always standing by to help.

#6

@fhassm: I guess you’re right, the never ending debate between open and closed source. It’s always fun to reverse engineer!

@AnkerSupport: I’ve dropped a mail over and will take it from there. Thanks!

#7

As an old sly fox :slight_smile: a retired computer engineer now I can tell you many stories. Of course I had to use all kind of OS.
When working at the University you have to be familiar with UNIX (later LINUX), MAC-OS and Windows of course
Funny indeed as we all at our chair were really LINUX fans and tried to install this unstable (ONLY in the beginning) and cryptic system on all devices. Mostly we were praying, but often it did not help. :grin:

#8

I’m simply amazed Anker is so dishonest about this keyboard. it’s being sold as macOS compatible but this keyboard can only handle 2 keypresses at once. So many key combos that requires more than 2 keys to be pressed at once will fail. Such as moving files with command+option+v. Some multi key combo’s do work like taking a screenshot shift + command + 4. It seems that any shortcuts involving command + option shortcuts simply do not work.

Then there’s the F4 and F5 keys that are just dead in macOS. So you can’t open the launchpad and quickly start an app. This keyboard is so nicely build but it is let down by garbage firmware and no option for us to change anything.

I bought this thinking it could replace my broken apple wireless keyboard. It can not. And the dead keys are really dead as I tried Karabiner-elements and it doesn’t see anything when pressing F4/F5. And no switching to Android or Windows mode doesn’t change anything. Really feel mislead and now I wasted money on a keyboard that’s pretty much useless unless you like a much slower workflow.

This keyboard is clearly not designed by someone that actually uses macOS/iOS. The keyboard shortcuts are there for a reason, they speed up your workflow by a big margin. With this keyboard however you can’t use many of them and the dead keys are just the cherry on top of this turd of a keyboard.

Wish I could return it and get my money back.