Forum Discussion
Remote Desktop for MacOS doesn't translate key strokes to remote windows machine
Hello,
I installed Remote Desktop client for MacOS to connect to a remote windows 10 computer.
once I'm connected, none of the special characters, e.g. (|"\<!#$%&+ etc that I type on my Dutch macOS keyboard are correctly sent to windows 10.
After numerous testing, discussion with keyboard experts, other RDC software etc. I concluded that the reason is because Microsoft RDC must still use the last-century physical key mapping technique. If I press a key, windows just get that key stroke and will print whatever character this key means in the installed keyboard layout on the windows side. If I press shift+2 on macOS side, I will get various characters on the windows side, depending on what keyboard layout is chosen in windows language settings. MS RDC couldn't be dumber than that if it wanted to.
the other RDC software have long understood that character translations (not key mapping) is the easier solution
teamviewer, logmein, Anydesk have used unicode since the turn the of century. Anydesk does that and 100% of my macOS keyboard characters are functional via RDC even when the target windows machine has Dutch, French or UK windows keyboard layout.
Using unicode solved all keyboard.
I don't get that microsoft is still stuck in a technology that used in the previous century. Considering implementing unicode translation is super easy (I'm not a programmer by many have told me that) I wonder if microsoft frustrate us on purpose, so we are discouraged of using apple products.