The Delete key on my Apple Keyboard and my Kinesis Keyboard's backspace on BOTH my Mini and my A4 MacBookPro stopped working at all!

Questions & Suggestions
1

For weeks, I have struggled with the complete failure of those keys in exactly the same way. Hours of troubleshooting with Apple led me down many rabbit holes before finally finding a simple answer today.

I'm merely sharing the solution for anyone else having a similar problem of keyboard keys not working.

Summary of the problem

• On a Mac mini with a connected Kinesis keyboard, as well as an old Apple USB keyboard attached. Also had exactly the same problems with the keyboard on my home office A-4 MacBook Pro, which I also use with a Kinesis Keyboard.

• In my main user account, the Delete key (built‑in Apple keyboard) and Backspace/Delete on the Kinesis just stopped working at all.

• The same keys worked normally:

• In alternate/test user accounts.

• In Safe Mode.

• Reinstalling macOS and updating to newer versions did not fix the problem.

What we tried on the software/OS side

1. Confirmed it was user‑specific

• Tested in alternate users and in Safe Mode; keys worked there, so hardware and core OS were OK.

2. Reset keyboard‑related preferences for the bad user

• In ~/Library/Preferences for the main user, removed keyboard preference files such as:

• com.apple.keyboardtype.plist

• apple.Keyboard-Settings.extension.plist

• com.apple.keyboardservicesd.plist

• com.apple.HIToolbox.plist

• Restarted so macOS could recreate fresh versions.

3. Cleaned up login items and background apps

• Removed or disabled automatic “Open at Login” items and many background helpers.

• Verified that after a clean restart with minimal startup items, Delete/Backspace worked correctly again.

Root cause discovered

• When I later re‑enabled Keyboard Maestro, the problem immediately returned.

• Inspecting Keyboard Maestro’s macros showed two macros whose hot key triggers were plain Delete and Backspace.

• With the Keyboard Maestro Engine running, those macros intercepted the Delete/Backspace keystrokes before they reached macOS, making it appear that the keys were dead.

Final fix

• Deleted the two Keyboard Maestro macros that used Delete and Backspace as triggers.

• After removing those macros, with Keyboard Maestro running normally and my usual login items enabled, Delete and Backspace now work properly on both keyboards in my main user.

• No further OS reinstalls or hardware repairs were necessary.

That’s the whole story in brief: a per‑user keyboard preference reset plus discovery and removal of two Keyboard Maestro macros that were silently “eating” Delete and Backspace.

Hope this helps anyone with similar problems.

2

So in short, you had inadvertently set backspace and delete as hotkeys for macros. I would guess that that happened while you were using the Editor and pressing those keys were caught by the “This hot key” field of the macros, when in fact you were just trying to delete something within the editor.

It’s the sort of thing that is easily done when one is working swiftly on macros. I haven’t ended up with delete keys in that field, but it has occasionally caught other keys, but I think it’s all just human error rather than a UI issue that could or should be addressed. We just have to be diligent in checking our macros, as always! :slight_smile:

3

Remember to use Keyboard Maestro’s Interactive Help, Something unexpected is happening if you suspect any involvement of Keyboard Maestro in behaviour you don't understand.

It would find and resolve such issues in a very short time.

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