TrackPointD for macOS

A native menu bar companion for the Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II. It implements the useful parts of Lenovo's Windows control-panel software without drivers or third-party dependencies.

Version 2 highlights

• Rebuilds the settings window around Lenovo's Windows layout: an External TrackPoint Keyboard page plus the original F12 Modify… flow.
• Separates macOS permissions and platform-specific extras into a dedicated macOS Integration page so they are not presented as Lenovo features.
• Sends the keyboard's real hardware speed setting instead of pretending with a made-up acceleration curve.
• Supports both official transports: USB receiver 17EF:60EE and Bluetooth LE 17EF:60E1.
• Adds the Windows ThinkPad Preferred Scrolling switch and parses the native horizontal/vertical wheel reports.
• Adds the Windows F12 star-key actions: open up to four files/apps, open a web site, or type saved text.
• Adds Fn Lock control and reapplies keyboard settings after reconnect or wake.
• Maps the confirmed F4 and F8 vendor reports to default-input microphone mute and macOS Notification Center.
• Moves both modifier remaps to exact-device hidutil rules. Other keyboards and the user's global remaps are no longer touched.
• Removes all global mouse acceleration/defaults changes.
• Fixes the recursive middle-click event loop, event-tap state recovery, and exact-device input delivery.
• Replaces the in-place installer with build, self-test, sign, verify, then a staged replacement with rollback.

Settings UI

Click the white keyboard icon in the menu bar, then Settings…. Its center dot is red when connected, orange when attention is required, and dark gray when the keyboard is disconnected.

Use Try 1 and Try 9 beside Pointer speed for an obvious slow/fast comparison. The status below the slider says whether the level was applied to the keyboard or saved for its next connection. TrackPointD Enabled in the menu pauses remaps, shortcuts, and scrolling enhancements while leaving basic pointer input available. Scroll speed affects both axes on USB and Bluetooth; the default position preserves macOS's existing Bluetooth vertical speed.

The first tab follows Lenovo's Windows Keyboard Properties → External TrackPoint Keyboard page: keyboard graphic, nine-position Slow–Fast slider, Preferred Scrolling, and an F12 action summary with Modify…. The F12 editor mirrors the Windows mode picker and its files list with Add/Remove, URL field, text field, and OK/Cancel flow. Lenovo's proprietary artwork is not copied; the keyboard graphic is drawn from a macOS system symbol.

The second tab contains the two required macOS permissions and all macOS-only options. When access has not been requested, Request Access… invokes Apple's native permission API and registers TrackPointD. The macOS prompt can then open the matching System Settings pane; only the user can approve the final switch. After a denial or approval, the button becomes Open Settings….

Setting	What it does	Origin
Pointer Sensitivity	Hardware level 1–9, default 5	Lenovo Windows parity
ThinkPad Preferred Scrolling	Middle button + stick, vertical and horizontal	Lenovo Windows parity
User Defined Key (F12 ★)	Files/apps, HTTP(S) URL, text, or disabled	Lenovo Windows parity
Fn Lock	Standard F1–F12 vs. icon actions	Keyboard firmware
Right Option → F18	Convenient macOS input-source shortcut	macOS adaptation
Left Opt ↔ Left Cmd	Mac-style physical modifier order	macOS adaptation
Scroll Speed	Vertical and horizontal TrackPoint scrolling on USB and Bluetooth	macOS adaptation

Saved text is stored in macOS user defaults as plain text. Do not put passwords or sensitive personal information in the F12 text action.

What Lenovo's Windows program actually provides

Lenovo's public package is version 1.0.8.06241 (2021-08-17). Its Control Panel page, External TrackPoint Keyboard, exposes exactly three user-facing settings:

1. Pointer speed: nine positions, internal value 0–8, default 4. The device receives 1–9, default 5.
2. ThinkPad Preferred Scrolling: on by default.
3. F12 user-defined action: open files/apps, open a web site, or enter text.

The package has no published source. Inspection of Lenovo's official installer (SHA-256 d14fc7c06306db52fb9c0b01b50efdba0b89dfdae6f75d9ff22bf5198189b3c5) shows a user-space stack rather than a custom kernel driver:

Windows component	Role established from the package
ADDPage.dll	External TrackPoint Keyboard Control Panel UI
SetSpeed.exe + fsHid*.dll	HID configuration reports
HScrollFun.exe	Raw Input vertical/horizontal scrolling
HKF12.exe	F12 files/apps, URL, and text actions
osd.exe + ExternalTPKBSvc.exe	Hotkeys, OSD, and settings reapply

Windows behavior	macOS status
Hardware pointer speed 1–9	Implemented over USB and BLE
Preferred vertical/horizontal scrolling	Implemented with native reports plus compatibility fallback
Middle click when no scroll occurred	Implemented with deferred click, matching the Linux state machine
F12 files/apps, URL, text	Implemented; up to four files/apps
Fn+Esc / Fn Lock	Implemented and persisted
F9 Settings, F10 Bluetooth, F11 keyboard settings	Adapted to the equivalent macOS panes/UI
Fn+PrtSc snipping tool	Adapted to macOS interactive screenshot
Volume and brightness keys/OSD	Handled by macOS when the host exposes the standard usages
F4 microphone mute	Toggles the current default input through CoreAudio when that device exposes a writable mute control
F8 Action Center	Adapted to macOS Notification Center using the documented Fn-N shortcut
F7 external-display management; SysRq/Break/Scroll Lock/Pause	Not emulated; no stable exact macOS equivalent
Fn+4 sleep	Standard HID System Sleep report is left to macOS; no duplicate event is synthesized
Swift Pair	Windows-only; use normal macOS Bluetooth pairing
Pairing mode, LEDs, six-key assistive input	Keyboard firmware; no daemon implementation needed

So the Windows control panel's three configurable features are all present, but the complete Windows experience is not a 100% clone. Windows-only OS integrations and Lenovo OSD behavior remain intentionally outside the parity claim.

Natural scrolling, modifier swaps, F18, and adjustable scroll speed are useful macOS additions, not Lenovo Windows features. Press-to-Select is deliberately not included: Keyboard II exposes no pressure/Z signal or native command, so ordinary pointer movement cannot be distinguished reliably from a press.

Requirements

• macOS 12 or newer
• ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II:
  • USB receiver: VID 0x17EF, PID 0x60EE
  • Bluetooth LE: VID 0x17EF, PID 0x60E1
• Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
• Accessibility and Input Monitoring permission for TrackPointD

Other Lenovo devices no longer activate the daemon.

Install or upgrade

git clone https://github.com/hoyaaaa/trackpoint-daemon-macos.git
cd trackpoint-daemon-macos
bash install.sh --check   # build and verify without installing
bash install.sh

The installer prefers an available Developer ID Application or Apple Development signing identity so macOS recognizes upgrades as the same app and keeps privacy approvals. Later upgrades reuse the installed app's signer when that identity is still available. If no stable identity is available it falls back to ad-hoc signing; macOS may then require both permissions again after an upgrade. Set TRACKPOINTD_SIGN_IDENTITY=- to force ad-hoc signing, or set it to a specific local code-signing identity.

This script is for building on the Mac that will run the app. A prebuilt app for public GitHub Releases must additionally use a Developer ID Application certificate, hardened runtime, Apple notarization, and stapling in the release pipeline; a local Apple Development signature is not a public distribution signature.

The installer builds a separate app, runs its protocol self-test, signs and verifies it, and only then replaces the installed copy. A failed upgrade rolls back to the previous app.

Grant both permissions:

1. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → TrackPointD
2. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring → TrackPointD

If an existing permission stops working after a new build, toggle TrackPointD off and on in that pane. The installer does not erase TCC permissions.

Karabiner-Elements cannot modify this keyboard at the same time as TrackPointD: its Modify events mode takes exclusive ownership, so TrackPointD cannot confirm TrackPoint movement. In Karabiner-Elements → Devices, turn off Modify events for TrackPoint Keyboard II. TrackPointD supplies its own device-only modifier remaps; other keyboards can remain enabled in Karabiner. If the dot remains orange after moving the stick, quit and reopen TrackPointD once.

Uninstall

bash uninstall.sh

Uninstall removes the app, Login Item, legacy LaunchAgent, and the per-device key-mapping property for the two TrackPoint Keyboard II IDs. If you manually added other hidutil mappings to those exact IDs, reapply them afterward. No other keyboard, global mouse setting, or privacy permission is changed.

How it works

Feature	Mechanism
Device detection	IOHIDManager, exact VID/PID matching
Hardware settings	IOHIDDeviceSetReport on attach, change, reconnect, and wake
Preferred scrolling	Report 0x16 on both transports; BLE standard vertical + vendor horizontal; fallback if needed
Middle click	Hold pending; emit click only if no wheel report/movement occurred
F12 and Lenovo hotkeys	Exact-device input-report callback
Key remaps	hidutil --matching for this model only
Pointer-origin confirmation	Manager-owned exact-device X/Y callback; no secondary HID queue
Software sensitivity fallback	One kCGHIDEventTap, fail-closed origin filter

Configuration reports, independently reconstructed from public protocol facts:

Transport	Report	Bytes
USB 60EE	Feature report 0x13, 8 bytes	13 command value 00 00 00 00 00
BLE 60E1	Output report 0x18, 3 bytes	18 command value

Commands: 0x02 hardware speed, 0x05 Fn Lock, 0x09 Preferred Scrolling. The undocumented Windows initialization command is deliberately not sent.

The native wheel input report ID is 0x16 (22 decimal) on both USB and BLE. BLE additionally sends standard vertical-wheel input. TrackPointD scales that existing event and synthesizes only the vendor horizontal value, avoiding double vertical scrolling. Hotkey report 0x05 is 2 bytes over USB and 3 bytes over BLE; the BLE-only middle-button report 0x15 is 9 bytes. All lengths and embedded IDs are checked before a report is used.

Build check

clang -O2 -fobjc-arc -mmacosx-version-min=12.0 \
  -o /tmp/trackpointd trackpointd.m \
  -framework Cocoa -framework ApplicationServices -framework CoreAudio \
  -framework IOKit -lm
/tmp/trackpointd --self-test

Research sources and licensing

• Lenovo Windows download page
• Official English user guide
• Official Korean user guide
• Linux hid-lenovo.c
• Linux Keyboard II support commit
• USB capture and descriptor from the Linux support report
• Linux resume/reapply fix
• tp2ctl protocol captures
• Karabiner-Elements input-grabbing architecture

The Lenovo binaries are proprietary and are not copied or redistributed. Linux is GPL-2.0-or-later; this MIT project uses protocol facts and an independent implementation, not copied Linux source. Repositories without a clear license were treated as behavioral references only.

License

MIT © hoyaaaa