Special characters from Mac to Windows RDP session

Special characters from Mac to Windows RDP session

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anderslund1

Hi,

I have been struggling for a while around getting special characters from my Mac to a Windows Server via RDP.
Sending $, |, @ and a few others (forgot which ones) seems impossible. I have tried different things like setting the Keyboard layout and Sending input as Unicode, in settings for RDP sessions but none of my efforts seems to work.

Can anyone help getting these characters to work?

All Comments (3)

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Richard Markiewicz

Hello

That sounds inconvenient and I'm sorry about that. Can you let me know what keyboard layout you're using on your Mac?

Thanks and kind regards,

Richard Markievicz

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anderslund1

Hi Richard,

Thank you for looking into this. I'm using Danish (da-DK) keyboard on the Mac and the remote server is also setup with Danish keyboard. I use an external (Windows) keyboard with my Mac, but it is the same issue if I use the internal or external keyboard.

macOS 27.0.1
RDM 2026.3.1.2

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Richard Markiewicz

Hello

If we take the "$" as an example case; I've seen (and please correct me if I'm wrong here because I've not used a Danish keyboard layout before) that the way to type it is actually different on Windows and Mac.

On Mac, I need to type [Option / Alt] + [Shift] + [3]

On Windows, I need to type [AltrGr] + [4]

Does that sound right?

There are two ways I can make this work on my side after testing.

  1. In the RDP session, "Local Resources" > "Keyboard", set "Send input as Unicode" to Yes
    1. This means, that the keys you press are interpreted locally and then the actual character that is produced is sent to Windows. This disregards the keyboard layout on the server.
    2. To type a $ in the remote session, you need to use the Mac key combination ([Option] + [Shift] + [3])
  2. In the RDP session, "Local Resources" > "Keyboard", set "Send input as Unicode" to No
    1. Set the keyboard layout to either Default or Danish ("Default" will use whatever you have configured on your Mac, so as you wrote it's Danish, that's fine)
    2. This means, that the individual key presses are sent to the server, and the server interprets them into the final character. So, the layout on the client and server must match.
    3. If the server keyboard layout is not Danish, you need to sign out and sign back into Windows. If the server was not configured for a Danish keyboard layout at connection time, RDP cannot reconfigure it on-the-fly. This is an RDP restriction.
    4. To type a $ in the remote session, you need to use the Windows key combination ([AltrGr] + [4])


Can you let me know if it works for you? The approach you want to take really is determined by if you want to use Windows or Mac key combinations, since they seem to be different on the two OS.

Please, let me know if something isn't clear or you have questions. Remote cross-platform keyboard input is tricky and I've tried to explain it well, but I'm happy to revisit this if what I wrote isn't clear.

Thanks and kind regards,

Richard Markievicz