Version 2.5.0 - Keys are not mapped correctly anymore

Thanks for that info!

I took a look online at the German keyboard layout, and it looks like <, >, and | are all on the same key - directly to the left of the Y key (on the German layout). I also found a tool on Microsoft's website that shows the layout of different keyboards. From that tool, it looks like you need to use AltGr along with the < key to input a | on Windows.

I set my target machine to use a German layout and accessed my TinyPilot web interface on a Mac.

I was able to input < by hitting the expected key (directly left of Y on a German keyboard). > required me to use shift (expected), and I could enter | by hitting the right-hand alt key with < - On a Mac this is the right-hand option key.

Can you test whether you can enter | via your TinyPilot by using the right-hand option key along with they key directly to the left of your Y key?

If that doesn't work, can you visit keycode.info and type <, >, and |, and share screenshots of the information it displays?

Please let me know if I can clarify anything here.

Your target machine interprets keypresses forwarded by your TinyPilot as if you were using your target machine's keyboard layout. For example, if my target machine uses a German keyboard layout, but my client machine uses an English layout, I would hit the English Z key on my physical keyboard and my target machine would display a Y. That's because the English Z key maps to the German Y key.

From your description, it sounds like your client machine (Mac) uses a German layout. But your target machine may be using a different layout, since |, >, and < aren't in the expected place.

Could you test other non-alpha-numeric characters, like @ # $ * ( ) to see if they're in the expected positions?

Could you also share a screenshot of your Windows keyboard settings with me?

On Windows, open Settings, click on Time & Language, then Language. Under the Preferred languages section, select the current default language and click the Options button. There should be a Keyboards heading with a list of keyboards that are installed on your machine.

Thanks for confirming the other keys are working as expect and for sharing those screenshots, @tinyuser2022! This behavior is odd.

On your Mac, can you visit keycode.info and type <, >, and |, and share screenshots for each of those keys?

Thanks for sharing those screenshots, @tinyuser2022. Those codes appear correct.

I'm a bit stumped on this issue, so we're doing some additional research to see if there's anything else we can check. I'll respond with an update when I have more information.

Please feel free to add any additional information or ask any questions in the meantime.

Thanks for your patience with this, @tinyuser2022. After doing some more testing, it looks like this might be a browser issue.

I performed all of my previous tests using Firefox, which worked. However, Safari and Chrome have different behavior, and I was able to reproduce the issue you're seeing (using ^ plus shift/option).

Could you try typing <, >, and | in Firefox and let me know if that works as expected? If Firefox works, that definitely suggests that this is a browser issue. Unfortunately, if that's the case, there's not much we can do on the TinyPilot side, because Safari and Chrome are sending different keycodes to your TinyPilot than Firefox.

I understand that it's not a convenient solution to use a different browser to type via your TinyPilot, but I'm not sure if there's anything else we can do to fix this.

It looks like this an odd behavior issue with Chrome and Safari. Chrome and Safari are both incorrectly interpreting the < key and sending that incorrect data to TinyPilot, causing TinyPilot to send the wrong key to your target machine. Firefox appears to interpret the < key correctly.

Since this is a browser issue, there isn't much we can do in the short term to fix this. However, I've created an issue on Github to track this problem and to see if there may be anything we can do to fix this on the TinyPilot side.

I hope that helps! Please let me know if you have any questions.