Intercepting Command+Tab in Microsoft Remote Desktop

Questions & Suggestions
1

Like many people, I've been working from home of late, and I'm connecting from my Mac to a Windows machine at work over Microsoft Remote Desktop. I have most things working well (including using Keyboard Maestro to automate various things), but I have yet to figure out how to keep Command+Tab from invoking the macOS application switcher. Is it possible with Keyboard Maestro to intercept that keystroke and send it to the remote Windows session as Win+Tab? (Within the remote Windows session, Cmd on its own is interpreted as the Win key.)

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Hi soisaac. Welcome to the forum.

I can think of a few possible (meaning untested and potentially not actually usable) solutions.

I have not used Microsoft’s Remote Desktop for a long time, but some other screen sharing applications, such as Jump Desktop, have a setting which allows you to tell the app to send those commands to the remote machine or not.

Option “A” is to see if Microsoft’s Remote Desktop has an option like that.

If not, Option “B” would be to see if you can use Jump Desktop or a different application. (Note that this probably largely depends on your Windows PC setup and whether or not you can install an application on it. Depending on your level of I.T. department lockdown, that may not be feasible.

Option “C” is to see if you can re-train yourself to use a different keyboard combination, such as Option-Tab, and have Keyboard Maestro send the remote computer Windows+Tab. Again, I’m not 100% sure if you can do this or not because I don’t have a Windows PC to test with.

Option “D” would be to see if there’s a way to tell your work Windows PC to remap Win+Tab to another key combination, such as Option-Tab. This idea is related to ‘C’ but basically approaches it from the other side.

Good luck and I hope you’re able to find an option that works for you!

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Thanks for the suggestions! I'd forgotten about Jump Desktop (though I sometimes use it on my iPad), and indeed, it seems to provide everything that I need over RDP, at least in my few minutes evaluating it, even without being need to install the Fluid Remote Desktop server component on the Windows machine (which I'm pretty sure my employer's IT department has explicitly banned). I should be all set!

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Excellent! I had forgotten that Jump Desktop can do “regular” RDP too.

I’m a definite convert to Jump Desktop after many years of being a Screens user. Jump Desktop Connect seems to work more often than Screens Connect.