Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad Review: Built for One Mac

The round key after F12 is a fingerprint reader. On a desktop Mac it does what the sensor on a MacBook does: it unlocks the Mac, fills in passwords and passkeys, and approves Apple Pay. Cult of Mac adds a smaller use, a single press that locks the screen, and notes that the key needs more force than its neighbors, so a stray finger rarely triggers it.

Apple's platform security guide explains the design, and the design sets the limits. The keyboard only reads the finger. Enrollment, matching and the security rules run in the Secure Enclave of the Mac, and the two sides are paired with keys held in hardware. A finger enrolled on a MacBook's built-in sensor works on the keyboard too, and the other way round.

The same guide contains the rule that decides who should buy it. The keyboard can be securely paired with only one Mac at a time, while one Mac can hold pairings for up to five of these keyboards. Move it from a work Mac to a home Mac and Touch ID has to be paired again, and the first new enrollment asks you to confirm by pressing the Mac's power button twice or by matching a finger that Mac already knows.

Touch ID also needs a Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 15.1 or later. On an Intel Mac, an iPad or a Windows PC the round key does nothing useful.

The keys are low and short, the laptop style Apple uses on its MacBooks. RTINGS rates the typing quality of this keypad model as great and the noise as quiet, and expects the low profile to keep long sessions from becoming tiring. Its measured figures are for members only.

The writers who type most are the least won over. Cult of Mac's reviewer, a mechanical keyboard user, found the keys stable and free of wobble but flat enough that he made more typos, because nothing tells a fingertip how close it is to the center of a key. Macworld calls the short travel a bit lifeless for people who type a lot. Both complaints are about preference, and a MacBook owner will find the same feel at a desk.

The case is a fixed wedge. RTINGS lists no second incline setting, and it found this wide board flexes more than the older compact Magic Keyboard.

The extra width buys a full navigation block with home, end, page up, page down and forward delete, plus full-size arrow keys and a numeric pad. On the compact models those functions need fn or modifier combinations. The top row adds F13 to F19, which you can assign to actions in macOS. At 41.87 cm (16.48 in) wide, the full-size layout pushes the mouse further from your right hand.

The August relabel is the only change Apple has made. Symbols now replace the words on the navigation keys and on tab, caps lock, shift, return and delete, as they did on this year's MacBooks. Apple's British and European layouts have used symbols for years. A US buyer who prefers words can still find the earlier stock, sold as MXK73LL/A with white keys and MXK83LL/A with black keys. The symbol edition carries part numbers starting MJM, so the box tells you which one you have.

White keys and black keys are both available, and the black version costs more.

Apple rates the battery at about a month or more between charges. The figure comes from Apple's automated discharge tests on pre-production units paired with an M4 iMac, according to the tech specs page, and no reviewer has run one down independently. It is a plausible figure for a keyboard with no backlight, and the missing backlight is part of how Apple reaches it.

Charging goes through a USB-C port in the middle of the back edge, with a braided USB-C cable in the box. Plugging it into a Mac also pairs it. Apple's support page confirms the keyboard keeps working while it charges, which the Magic Mouse does not. The keyboard has no charge indicator of its own, so the battery level lives in the Mac's Bluetooth menu or Control Center.

This keyboard holds one Bluetooth connection, and RTINGS names the lack of multi-device pairing as its main drawback. Moving it to another Mac means removing it in the first Mac's Bluetooth settings or plugging it into the new one with the cable, as Apple's setup page describes, and then pairing Touch ID again. Universal Control lets one keyboard drive a Mac and an iPad side by side, but Cult of Mac points out that both have to sit together on the same Apple Account, which rules out most work-and-home pairs.

It still works as a plain Bluetooth keyboard with recent iPhones and iPads on Apple's compatibility list, and with Windows, where RTINGS found some keys have no function. Neither gets Touch ID.