OS X Terminal: Meta key + alt functionality at the same time

I use a Swedish keyboard in Mac OS X and use the following setup for Emacs.app:

First I have KeyRemap4MacBook installed and I have it setup to change the left Option key to Command.

I then have the following in my .emacs:

(setq mac-option-modifier 'none)
(setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)

This makes Emacs treat command as Meta and ignore Option. Since the left Alt/Option key is remapped to command, this makes it work lite meta while the right Alt/Option key still works for entering special characters like @ [] and {}.

App specific Mac shortcuts like Cmd+C and Cmd+V no longer work, but global shortcuts like Cmd+space for Spotlight and Cmd+Tab for app switching do.

Update: If you use iTerm2 as a Terminal, that has support for mapping only the left Alt/Option key to meta, which means you can still use the right AltGr/Option key for entering special characters. This also means you can use meta as normal inside Emacs running in the iTerm2 terminal.


I have a Swedish keyboard on my Mac and I'm using Aquamacs. Adding the two lines (attribution goes to Joakim Hårsman)

(setq mac-option-modifier 'none)
(setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)

in .emacs (and restarting Aquamacs) did the trick for me.