
Mac keyboard shortcuts - tosh
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236
======
whywhywhywhy
It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts
compared to all other operating systems. There absolutely has been some people
there who deeply care and think long and hard about how experts use their
systems even if the actual main company doesn't care so much about that
segment anymore.

Everything just makes sense logically and mnemonically like using shift to
invert actions like cmd+z and cmd+shift+z rather than having ctrl+z and ctrl+y
for undo/redo.

Then add to this the ability to rebind any shortcuts in any app at an OS
level. It's a little frustrating because I'm trying to move my computing away
from Apple because I'm no longer convinced they care about Macs in the long
term but just really wish either Microsoft would have the guts to throw a lot
of their legacy out and fix all this stuff or that there were some way to
actually achieve this level of coherence across the whole system on Linux.

~~~
AnonHP
> It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts
> compared to all other operating systems.

I agree with your other points (including easier customizability), but have to
completely disagree with this quoted sentence.

In my experience of using macOS/OS X/Mac OS X as well as Windows and Linux,
macOS is one OS where a user cannot avoid using the mouse or trackpad!

On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system,
application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad,
relying only on the keyboard. The same on a Mac would be frustrating because
keyboard navigation, especially for menus, is cumbersome. There are many Apple
apps that cannot be completely controlled just using the keyboard either.
There are many UI controls (including in dialogs) that just need a mouse or
keyboard. When I find these instances, for me it's like death by a thousand
paper cuts (note: I do have preferences set to navigate through all controls
when hitting Tab).

If you disagree with my assessment, please try this using only the keyboard
(no mouse or trackpad) and see how cumbersome it is (not to mention
inconsistent in certain ways with the rest of the system too):

* Open System Preferences

* Open the Keyboard settings (just an example)

* Navigate from one tab to another within the settings

Of course, I'd like to know how something like this can be done faster using
the keyboard.

~~~
userbinator
_On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system,
application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad,
relying only on the keyboard._

It's also far more discoverable --- if you press Alt, accidentally or
otherwise, the menu highlights and you can immediately use the arrow keys to
navigate it. The underlined letters (sadly missing by default in later Windows
versions) also make things more obvious.

There's also this oddity:

[https://superuser.com/questions/59007/enter-to-open-a-
file-i...](https://superuser.com/questions/59007/enter-to-open-a-file-in-
finder)

In just about every other graphical file explorer I've ever used, including
the DOS ones, Enter opens the selected item. In the Mac Finder, it's _Command-
O_. Yes, I get the fact that it's mnemonic with the others in that list, but
it's completely contrary to the customary and rapidly learned behaviour of
navigating using the arrow keys and Enter ---which is located very close to
the arrow keys, and requires only one hand to operate easily.

~~~
awakeasleep
macOS has discoverability features that obviate the need for the "press alt"
feature. You don't even need to know what menu contains your target.

Command-? (command shift /) opens the help menu with fast incremental search
through all menubar items, showing you the shortcut of what you're interested
in, and also allowing you to tap return to substitute the shortcut.

~~~
derefr
It’s a nice feature; a shame that it’s not discoverable (i.e. something people
would think to look for when they need it, if they hadn't used it before.)

Personally, if I were designing it, I wouldn't have exposed it as a separate
bar in the Help menu of the app; but rather just made it an API provider to
the OS (sort of like how drag-and-drop data sources work), such that the OS
search (Spotlight) could be made a "universal" search, capable of searching
_both_ the OS generally, _and_ the currently-focused application specifically.

While I'm dreaming, imagine if you could go into Mission Control and start
typing, and it'd highlight/focus the set of windows that "have" the text
you're looking for (even if not necessarily scrolled into their viewport.)
Like the search you can do in Safari's "tab overview" by pressing Cmd+F there,
but across all windows of all apps. Once you've narrowed it down to one
window, press Enter and that window will pop to the foreground—perhaps with
that text pre-selected as if you had done a Cmd+F search within the app.

Or, something even less likely to happen: imagine if you could move your mouse
by searching across the corpus of text _visibly on-screen_ (presumably via
interaction with the OS text-rendering layer), such that you could jump the
cursor to a specific button; or even to the checkbox with a specific label.

~~~
reaperducer
_a shame that it’s not discoverable (i.e. something people would think to look
for when they need it, if they hadn 't used it before.)_

It's discovered when someone clicks on the "Help" menu at the top of every
single screen. How much more discoverable can it be without resorting to
Clippy-style intrusions?

~~~
plorkyeran
There is nothing on the Help menu that indicates that the keyboard shortcut
exists.

~~~
RandallBrown
I thought the post was referring to the discoverability of the search feature.

No way to know that pressing Alt shows keyboard shortcuts on windows either.

~~~
k12sosse
You sure showed them!

------
freetonik
The consistency of macOS keyboard shortcuts is one of the main reasons I have
huge problems switching to Linux or Windows. Despite the non-trivial amount of
tweaking and customization, I could never achieve the same level outside of
macOS.

Just to name a few:

\- CMD+left/right: start/end of line

\- CMD+up/down: start/end of file

\- CMD+Shift+arrows: corresponding selection

\- Alt+left/right: word movement

\- Alt+Shift+arrows: corresponding word selection

\- CMD+a: select all

\- CMD+1,2,3: switch between tabs in browsers/iterm/IDEs/editors

(surprisingly and infuriatingly, this does not apply to native macOS tabs;
e.g. in Finder Cmd+1/2/3 changes the view, but not tabs)

All that + the fact that clipboard, undo/redo, app and windows switching are
ALL done via CMD makes it truly a modern hyper button. And you still have
Control for Emacs bindings, which also work in most Cocoa text fields.

If you're interested, this [1] is one of the best attempts to bring macOS
keybindings to Linux (in particular, Elementary OS). It's a set of settings
for Autokey [2].

There is also Kinto [3], which solves one particular problem: copy-paste from
terminal with consistent shortcuts.

1\. [https://github.com/roymckenzie/macos-autokey-
phrases](https://github.com/roymckenzie/macos-autokey-phrases)

2\. [https://github.com/autokey/autokey](https://github.com/autokey/autokey)

3\. [https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto](https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto)

UPD: edit formatting

~~~
tgb
Not sure how different this is from Windows. Use home/end for start of line or
ctrl+page up/page down to go to start of document. Ctrl+left/right moves by
words. Holding shift selects while doing any of these. Ctrl+backspace/delete
to delete by word instead of character. Ctrl+a to select everything.
Ctrl+1,2,3 select tabs, Windows+1,2,3 selects apps. The main advantage I see
on Mac is the separate ctrl/cmd keys that let you use ctrl+c/v for unix
terminals. Other than that, I think it's whatever you're used to.

Of course some laptops don't have end/home/page up/page down keys and you have
to avoid those.

~~~
donkeyd
It's not just that some laptops don't have them, it's also that they're always
in a different place. Every time I use windows, I need to look at the keyboard
to find home, end, etc. On any Mac I use I don't have to search.

~~~
tgb
It's true, non-Mac laptop keyboards are almost invariably awful layouts, often
entirely lacking some useful keys.

------
Exuma
I _highly_ recommend everyone learn the readline keys. They apply everywhere,
in chrome, messengers, etc. They're the most valuable hotkeys that I've
learned other than learning vim.

I set them as the Message Of The Day in my .zshrc (or .bashrc if you don't use
zsh) until I memorized them. <c-f> is genric formatting for hotkeys, where c
stands for control and you type "f" at same time.

IMPORTANT: For these to be level extremely effective you MUST REMAP your caps
lock key to a control key. System Prefs > Keyboard > Modifier Keys button at
bottom right

    
    
        # MOTD
        function echo_color() {
          local color="$1"
          printf "${color}$2\033[0m\n"
        }
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-f  Move forward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-b  Move backward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-p  Move up"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-n  Move down"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-a  Jump to beginning of line"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-e  Jump to end of line"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-d  Delete forward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-h  Delete backward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-k  Delete forward to end of line"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-u  Delete entire line"
    

Imagine you want to go up 2 lines to edit a HN comment. You could move your
right hand to arrow key, or you can simply press caps with your pinky and type
"p" with your other pinky. So much faster! Now you can see why these are so
effective, and are really my favorite.

Note that as you start to use these you will be pleased to see they apply in a
lot of applications. For example, type command+L in chrome to jump to the
address bar and highlight it, now type "news" in the address bar. The
autocomplete dropdown will pop up. Now type control+n (readline move down) and
you can scroll through the list.

I'm obsessed with optimizations and efficiency and the 2 things mentioned
above are the absolute gems. Also, I highly recommend:
[https://medium.com/vunamhung/set-a-blazingly-fast-
keyboard-r...](https://medium.com/vunamhung/set-a-blazingly-fast-keyboard-
repeat-rate-3d122ddac536)

`0` is a little to fast for me so I prefer speed `1` and it's perfect.

~~~
yodsanklai
Because there is no right ctrl on a mac keyboard, some of these shortcuts are
inconvenient. For instance, ctrl-A. Do you use your pinky or your thumb?

~~~
nhlx2
Enter Karabiner-Elements, to bind right Alt to Control etc. It's one of the
first pieces of software I install on a new Mac.

~~~
mark-wagner
Not only that, if you hate the virtual escape key KE can make caps lock send
escape if tapped and control if held. See [https://medium.com/@pechyonkin/how-
to-map-capslock-to-contro...](https://medium.com/@pechyonkin/how-to-map-
capslock-to-control-and-escape-on-mac-60523a64022b)

------
kozhevnikov
The main shortcut to remember is ⌘⇧? (or ⌘⇧/ on some layouts) which focuses
Search under Help. It searches through all menu items and pressing down arrow
will highlight it and show its shortcut. Pressing enter will execute it, but I
prefer to cancel and use the direct shortcut to build up muscle memory.

~~~
Kovah
I just tried this in Firefox and instead of focusing search in the menu bar,
it took me to the Firefox help page on mozilla.org.

~~~
callahad
Hm, I can't reproduce that here. What version of macOS and Firefox are you
running? Does the shortcut work properly in other programs?

~~~
Kovah
⌘⇧/ worked for me, like mentioned in the other comments. German keyboard. :)

------
xhrpost
A bit of a rant, but could be worth getting some input. Coming from mostly a
Windows background, it feels like Mac's despite all these shortcuts, still
don't have "alt-tab" working properly. The equivalent on Mac is Command-tab,
but it doesn't work when going from a desktop app (ie, not maximized) to a
maximized window. I can go the other direction just fine, and between
maximized windows, but choosing a max window from a desktop app just does
nothing.

Am I using it "wrong"? Should I only use maxed windows or only desktop un-
maxed windows and not both at the same time? I've googled this multiple times
and found little help.

~~~
pazimzadeh
"Command" \+ "~" will switch between windows of the app currently in focus.

Not the same behavior as Alt-Tab, but together with Command+Tab it works well.

If you hold Command down after doing Command+Tab, you can also use "~" and
"Tab" to select the app to the left or right in the list of recent apps.

~~~
dunham
Thanks, I did not know about that last one. I've been instinctively using Cmd-
Shift-Tab for that, which is a little awkward to execute.

~~~
jakemauer
I didn't know this either! I'll probably continue using shift as it's
engrained in me from browsers where ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab cycle through
open tabs forwards and backwards.

------
mindfulhack
The existence of this thread, with no mention of the Touch Bar yet, but we're
seeing keen enthusiasm over shortcuts with as much as 3 keyboard keys
involved, demonstrates exactly how useless the gimmick of the Touch Bar is. It
provides no snappiness in tactility or aurality, which is a key part of why
keyboard shortcuts are so useful and memorable.

My Touch Bar even froze up the other day, though that was almost the first
time it's happened in my 3 years of using 3 generations of Touch Bar MBPs.
Long live the keyboard, and I hope Apple phases out the Touch Bar soon.

~~~
GeekyBear
>The existence of this thread, with no mention of the Touch Bar yet, but we're
seeing keen enthusiasm over shortcuts with as much as 3 keyboard keys
involved, demonstrates exactly how useless the gimmick of the Touch Bar is.

For the vast majority of users, the shortcuts we all know and love might as
well not exist.

>About 90 per cent of computer users don't use CTRL-F to search for a word -
as they don't know such a keyboard shortcut exists, a Google survey found. The
results stunned Google's Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness,
Dan Russell.

"I think we just all assume that we all know it, but no one actually does."

[https://www.smh.com.au/technology/only-one-in-10-know-
what-c...](https://www.smh.com.au/technology/only-one-in-10-know-what-ctrlf-
does--here-are-shortcuts-you-should-know-20111130-1o69d.html)

This specific audience is exactly the wrong group to ask about the utility of
the touch bar, since we are in the tiny minority who find traditional function
keys to be useful.

~~~
Terretta
Tech bubble and Google were similarly chagrined to realize normals used SERPs
to navigate to web sites when organic results didn't have the site itself top
of the list and users were ending up at places that confused them.

From Feb 15, 2010:

 _" Suddenly, the two worlds collided. The tech savvy ran head-on into the
tech illiterate and mockery and disbelief started to overtake confusion as the
general tone..."_

 _" While we mock those users, the simple fact is they haven't necessarily
failed, something failed them. With all of our talk about the semantic Web and
search engine optimization and tailoring search results to the individual
user, there are thousands upon thousands of users performing the same simple
search and following the same wrong road. If this were a standard traffic sign
misdirecting this many people, it would have been pulled down long ago."_

// via readwriteweb.com:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100215124750/http://www.readwr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100215124750/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_google_failed_internet_meme.php)

~~~
aasasd
I'm a web programmer, and I use web search to navigate to my bank's site.
Because there are probably hundreds of phishers waiting for me to mistype a
letter.

~~~
ImaCake
My firefox just remembers what sites I visit frequently, so when I start
typing my bank's URL, that's what I get when I press enter to autocomplete.
This seems robust to me; either I get my bank's website every time, or I will
get repeatedly scammed (unlikely).

------
robin_reala
The biggest keyboard ability that macOS gives me is built-in combining
characters. alt + a bunch of different characters gives you the ability to
write seamlessly in multiple languages (in my case English, French, German and
Swedish) without having to memorise altgr character codes or pop up an input
panel.

~~~
spanhandler
You need a lot of those to write fluently in English, too, thanks to all the
loan words and phrases we have. Particularly French, but quite a bit of
German, too. Having some common currency symbols available is nice. Enough
punctuation to write the occasional quotation or passage in French or
(especially in the US) Spanish. Even m-dash and a variety of other useful
English punctuation and symbols are easier to comfortably type on macOS than
anywhere else.

I’d buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is
silly. You’d think every default English layout would be fairly good for
_writing English_ , but I’ve not seen one nearly as good as Apple’s. You _can_
use AltGr or US International, but they’re both much worse for general-purpose
English writing.

Why other operating systems have’s stolen their alt/option-based typing layout
is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close _for composing
English-language text_. Certainly no other default layout.

[EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it
if it's a disaster...):

• Bullets.

— m-dashes.

90°

Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my
French is garbage).

Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥?

¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry)

∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on.

Straßburg

And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because
the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense
once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year,
I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys
screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming.
Every other OS, _please_ just copy this layout for your default English
keyboard.

~~~
chinigo
Agree. Dashes alone are worth the price of a MacBook Pro: <minus> for a
hyphen, <option-minus> for an en-dash, <shift-option-minus> for an em-dash.
Trivial to remember.

Just as good is the way Apple handles diacritics. You type a prefix keystroke
for the diacritic, then follow it with the letter that's being modified: ö is
<option-u, o>, ï is <option-u, i>, è is <option-grave, e>.

Most of the prefixes have easy-to-remember mnemonics: umlaut is <option-u>,
grave is <option-grave>, tilde is <option-n> (for eñe, I suppose), but even
hunting down these prefixes is fairly discoverable. After typing the prefix, a
placeholder character is displayed in the text box showing the mark you've
just entered, something like: ̲̈.

Then:

\- <escape> or moving the cursor with an arrow key enters the diacritic as
standalone character (e.g. ¨ is <option-u, escape>).

\- <backspace> deletes the diacritic.

\- A character that takes the diacritic enters the modified character.

\- A character that does not usually take the diacritic enters the diacritic
and the unmodified character (e.g. <option-n, 5> yields ˜5).

~~~
Hackbraten
Another way to enter a diacritic as a standalone character: control-option-u
for ¨.

------
second--shift
I must say, the single feature that made me switch to macOS (or that made me
comfortable with the switch) was the built-in emacs keybindings. I mapped Caps
Lock to Control and can finally stick with sane killing & yanking text, as
well as jumping around (front,end,back/fwd a char or word).

Gnome/GNU/Linux provides a compatibility layer that isn't as good as macOS's
emacs bindings.

~~~
3JPLW
I've gone further to support meta-keybindings for whole-word movement.
Control-b goes back one character, option-b goes back a whole word. It's
really easy to add and customize:

[http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System....](http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System.html)

~~~
second--shift
Unless an app overloads the shortcut (looking at you Slack...) that seems to
work by default for me: c-b and c-f behave as expected.

M-b and M-f work sometimes too, but these two get intercepted for ∫ and ƒ
respectively in Slack, Firefox, etc.

~~~
3JPLW
M-b and M-f work for me in slack with my custom defaultkeybinding.dict. It
only requires the app to use OS-native text inputs.

------
adrianmsmith
One item on that list I cannot understand:

Ctrl-Command-Power does an immediate reboot. Loses any unsaved documents.
Doesn't shut down cleanly so potentially damages the filesystem. No "are you
sure?". That's great: they thought the feature of "damage your computer" was
so useful they should make a keyboard shortcut for it.

It's one key away from Alt-Command-Power which I use all the time to put the
computer to sleep. So the feature is not only convenient, it's very
"discoverable". I certainly discovered it yesterday.

Windows laptops solve the problem by making you hold down the power button for
5 seconds, to prevent you from doing it accidentally.

WTF Apple. That’s just insane.

~~~
userbinator
_It 's one key away from Alt-Command-Power which I use all the time to put the
computer to sleep._

(Not a Mac user.) What does (short-)pressing the power button do? On Windows,
the default action for that is usually sleep, and as you noted, a long-press
is a hard poweroff (that's done in hardware directly, the short-press is just
an ACPI signal to the software.)

~~~
adrianmsmith
The originally posted link states:

> Power button: Press to turn on your Mac or wake it from sleep. Press and
> hold for 1.5 seconds to put your Mac to sleep. Continue holding to force
> your Mac to turn off.

------
Austin_Conlon
Human Interface Guidelines for the keyboard:
[https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guidelines/macos/user-interaction/keyboard/). I wish more developers of cross-
platform Mac apps (built with Electron, Mac Catalyst, etc) put these into
practice. Any iOS developer whose apps will be on Macs with Apple Silicon
should also read it.

~~~
sixstringtheory
This is my #1 gripe for cross platform apps. Just let me stay on home row and
use existing muscle memory!

------
MarcScott
Prior to me adopting Linux as my main OS, I used to love the keybindings on
macOS. That many of the same bindings I used in Emacs, also worked in
documents was amazing. That is except for Microsoft Office, which did not
comply with the system binding. All too often I'd use Ctrl + a to go to the
beginning of a line and start typing, and accidentally delete the entire
content of the document.

~~~
SanderSantema
I still accidentally try to use these on my linux machine, that’s one thing I
really do miss. One consolation is that I can still use them in my shell :)
Weirdly enough I never accidentally use these shortcuts while using vim. I’d
guess my subconscious is somehow aware of the contexts in which I’d use these
shortcuts and is able to differentiate between my browser, the commandline and
vim but not between using a browser on a mac vs. a linux machine.

~~~
saagarjha
I use nano exactly because I keep pressing ⌃E in vim ;)

------
michens
One thing I love about macOS terminal is the distinction between Command-C and
Control-C in the Terminal. One copies a text under cursor and the other sends
a SIGINT. I absolutely hate using Control-Shift-C to copy a text in Linux
terminal and Control-C anywhere else.

~~~
Hackbraten
While I like that distinction too, I wonder why Linux terminals can’t tell
whether something is currently selected or not, and have Control-C do the
right thing depending on it?

I’ve been double-mapping Control-C on WSL for a few months (using ConEmu as a
terminal) and it works surprisingly well for me.

~~~
chmln
Some terminals can, kitty for instance.

------
GnarfGnarf
The thing I miss the most on macOS is the equivalent of Shift + Windows key ⊞
+ right or left arrow, to move a window from one monitor to the other. This is
useful for apps like Excel and MS Word, which can't be dragged if they're
maximized.

I have set up a PC and a MacBook to share a screen, keyboard and mouse (KVM
switch). If I'm switched to the PC and I want to look at a window on the Mac,
and the Mac's window was on the shared monitor previously, there is no way to
shift the window to the built-in Retina screen without switching back to the
Mac, which has its own set of problems (I can't reliably switch back to the
PC, despite using a top-of-the-line Aten KVM).

I have configured Shift-Command ⌘ + ← left arrow to move the window on the
Mac, but it only works for apps with a Window option on the menu.

Some of my favourite keystrokes:

Finder:

    
    
        Command ⌘ + Shift + G: Explicitly paste path
        Right-click, Option ⌥ to "Copy as path"
        Command ⌘ + Shift + . (period): show hidden files
        Command ⌘ + ↑ (up arrow): Go up one level in the directories
    

Terminal:

    
    
        Command ⌘ + K: clear screen
    

Everywhere:

    
    
        F11: Hide all windows

~~~
deepGem
Termial: ctrl + L also clears the screen

~~~
GnarfGnarf
No Ctrl + L does not clear the screen. It merely inserts enough blank lines
(CR) until the stuff is moved out of sight. It's still there if you scroll up.

------
s_dev
[https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/](https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/)

Holding a button will bring up a list of available keyboard shortcuts.

------
jnsie
I bought a MacBook Pro in 2012 and it has no symbol on the alt/option key or
the control key. 8 years after coming from windows and I'm still confused when
I see shortcuts with symbols.

⌥⌘v or ^⌘f

The symbols are unintuitive and a ton of online and in-app resources use only
symbols. It's weirdly inconsistent to me that some keys are labeled with
symbols, others are not, and they are still commonly used in apple
documentation and elsewhere.

~~~
ben-schaaf
Just wait till you come across ⎋, ↖, ⇞ or ⌤!

~~~
saagarjha
(Escape, home, page up, enter)

------
ashton314
Mac keyboard shortcuts is one of a handful of features keeping me close to
macOS instead of switching to Linux.

I started using Emacs when I was around 6 or 7 years old. CTRL-[aeknpbfl] etc.
are hard-wired into my muscle memory, and they all work everywhere on every
app when editing text. All the other shortcuts use the Command key. This
brilliant distinction made the transition between FreeBSD’s command line (what
I grew up on) and the macOS GUI an easy one.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had to use a Windows machine where I’ve hit
`ctrl-a`, started typing, and lost my document. (Just an undo away, but
still.) So frustrating.

I recently discovered the KDE desktop. I thought, “oh, this is pretty and
really customizable! I could switch to this.”

And then I learned there was no easy way to use Emacs keybindings everywhere.
(Gnome has an option to do this and it works pretty well.)

If anyone knows of a way to get most of the core Emacs keybindings in KDE,
please let me know.

------
agustif
Cheatsheet is helpful

[https://mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/](https://mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/)

I customized the theme to dark once.

~~~
yreg
I have this running, but almost never use it (it usually pops up while I'm
holding cmd and e.g. reading the last few words on a website before I hit
cmd+w).

In what situations do you consciously decide to open cheatsheet and learn some
new shortcuts related to the app?

~~~
agustif
I don't know what to say, I almost never use it conciously. If I hang in doubt
on cmd it pops.

Not working on big sur right now though

------
chrisBob
Some of my favorites are pretty far down the list:

I was using Control-A and Control-K a lot on the command line to jump to the
beginning of the line, and then erase the rest of the line and tried it once
somewhere else and it worked! The other way to do this same sequence (Cmd-
right Cmd-Shift-Left)doesn't work in the terminal, and would require me to
take my hands off the home row to use the arrow keys (until recently [1] )

Option+arrow to jump by a word is also handy, but I almost never land exactly
where I want relative to punctuation the first time.

[1] I am currently using a Kinesis Freestyle Pro with arrows mapped to right-
spacebar + [IJKL]. They are still working out some issues for me where it
fails if I press Command before Fn (mapped to right space bar). If anyone has
a split keyboard recommendation where this would currently work without the
order dependency issues with the modifier keys please let me know!

~~~
second--shift
> I was using Control-A and Control-K a lot on the command line to jump to the
> beginning of the line, and then erase the rest of the line and tried it once
> somewhere else and it worked!

This is the behavior of emacs; I'm very happy as I spend most of my time in a
terminal window that I can use c- shortcuts both in emacs and in the OS
natively.

------
roland35
My favorite Mac shortcut is now option-command B, which I connected to an
automator app which changes my external monitor brightness. It calls ddcctl
which is a command line script which communicates over the displayport
connection to control the monitor. This is a huge improvement over the
annoying on screen monitor menu!

~~~
vikbytes
This sounds like something I'd find very useful, do you mind sharing a link on
how to set this up or where I can find more information on this? Thanks!

~~~
roland35
I did this before learning about other tools! But you can download ddcctl from
GitHub, then create an automator "quick action" with no input from any
application. Then I created a flow of "Ask for text" (brightness), "run shell
script" (/path/ddcctl -d 1 -b "$1/"

Once you have that saved you can go to your Mac keyboard settings and add this
new automator app as a new shortcut!

Or, use an existing app :)

------
armagon
Tangential to the topic: is there somewhere I can buy keyboard stickers with
the macOS shortcut symbols on them? I couldn't find them when I looked in the
past, and it is frustrating looking at my external keyboard (or even many
internal keyboards) and trying to figure out which key matches which funky
symbol.

~~~
crazygringo
Truly.

The fact that menus use all these crazy arcane symbols for keys like Esc, Del,
Tab, and so on, but they're not on the keyboard itself, has always baffled me.

Cmd, Opt, and Ctrl all have symbols on the keyboard. For the rest of the keys,
why don't menus just literally spell out "Esc", "Tab", "Del"?

~~~
1-more
Option and Control didn't even have these symbols until pretty recently, maybe
5ish years? Annoying.

------
ramblerman
I dislike the way mac makes almost all shortcuts start with the apple key.

Granted windows has a few, they are mostly OS specific, like windows-e to open
explorer. on OSX even something as standard as ctrl-c / ctrl-v uses the cmd
key.

I have much less difficulty switching between windows and ubuntu than to mac
when it comes to shortcuts.

~~~
gempir
Also most Linux/Windows shortcuts feel way more natural than on macOS

For a new tab in chrome Ctlr + T is easily done on Linux/Windows. On macOS for
Cmd + T you need to weirdly bend your thumb under your hand while also hitting
T somehow.

Or you need to move your entire hand 2 columns of keyboard layout to the right
to be able to hit cmd with your pinky.

~~~
fabianmg
In this forum you're going to get very very downvoted with anything that goes
against Apple.

Let's see.

Unix - Ctrl + c

Linux - Ctrl + c

Win - Ctrl + c

Mac - Option + c

Clearly the standard and natural way is the Apple way of doing things...

~~~
sbuk
Got nothing to do with it. Computing wasn't invented in 1990.

Ctrl-c/v is a essentially a kludge introduced into Windows because the IBM
Model M keyboard and similar didn't have a Meta key. It wasn't until Windows
3.1 that we see Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V being a 'thing'. Before then it was all
about IBMs CUA. Apple had CMD-C/V/X on the Lisa 9 years before. I'm not sure
what Xerox did on the Alto or if it even used keyboard shortcuts, but they did
refer to the operation as Copy/Paste (coined by Larry Tesla who went on to
work at Apple).

------
chrisBob
A related Mac feature is that you can remap keys at the OS level so that the
mapping works across any keyboard or app:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450/_index.html)

I have Caps Lock remapped to Backspace, even when I don't have a programmable
keyboard plugged in. I know Caps to Esc is also very common for Vim users, but
I find I make typos a lot more often than I use Vim.

Using launchd you can even do this before login so that it works in the login
window.

------
exabrial
I love osx but the world needs another company that makes great hardware and
combines it with a Unix based operating system. I would love to see some
competition for Apple.

------
blackrock
How do you activate the top system menu bar, to navigate through it via
keyboard only?

I always thought Mac designers were retarded for not making this critical
feature obvious.

Another peeve is the lack of dedicated keyboard keys. Like the printscreen
key. On Mac you have to press something like Command-shift-4.

Often times I notice, the Mac designers try to simplify things for the sake of
design, but they end up making the damn thing harder to use.

------
bjoli
I was forced to use OSX due to some.unlycky life circumstances and I found it
to actually be a half way decent OS! Having used Linux since I was 11, it took
surprisingly little tweaking before I felt at home.

However: I had serious issues with keyboards. Alt gr (right alt, used for
typing a lot of special signs useful for programming. Brackets, @ and such)
stopped working more times than I care to count. I ended up having to use
karabiner to work around it. There was an issue where the paragraph key
magically disappeared. That would have been fine, if it hadn't been my Emacs
leader key. I have had issues with some keyboard shortcuts just magically not
work due to me using Swedish as a system language, which is something I did
not have to deal with in any other OS. It just made the whole experience feel
rather unpolished.

Then Catalina came and I switched back to Linux. Now my 2015 iMac is just
collecting dust, and since they removed support for target display mode I
can't even use it as a second display, which is sad since the 4k 500candela
display is the only thing I really miss.

------
jorge-fundido
Killer keyboard feature for me is ~/Library/KeyBindinds/DefaultKeyBinding.dict
- _all_ text controls honor that. Very nice way to get basic emacs shortcuts
defined. I've yet to find something half as simple & effective as that in
linux desktop land, probably because of the variety of gui toolkits that isn't
present in osx.

~~~
aasasd
> _all text controls honor that_

Except Qt apps, of course.

------
kyranjamie
Does not mention:

\- CTRL + CMD + ALT + SHIFT + W = Generates 300MB WiFi diagnostics file (as of
Catalina)

\- CTRL + CMD + ALT + SHIFT + . = Generates System debug file

------
dnhz
One strange behavior is that in Finder (in list view for instance), page up
and page down (or Fn-Down, Fn-Up) move the view up and down, but the selected
item remains unchanged so that hitting the arrow keys returns the view back to
the selected item. In order to select a different item, I either use the
mouse/trackpad, hold down the arrow key to my desired item, or press
Option+Up/Down to move the selection to the beginning or end of the list of
files. I don't know of a way to move the cursor by one page view.

It's a behavior that I can get used to, but what I find inconsistent is that
the behavior is different in iTunes. It seems like in iTunes, the only way to
move the selection is either arrow keys or the mouse. Option+Up/Down doesn't
do what it does in Finder.

------
sixstringtheory
Another tip if you are mousing through a native app's menus in the menu bar,
holding ⌘, ⌥, ^ and ⇧ (or combinations of them) will show you the alternate
options in that menu that those extra keys in the combo perform.

One of my favorite things about the macOS shortcut system is this idea of
variations on operations using variations on shortcuts. They've kept the
system remarkably consistent.

Last tip is that if you want a quick way to type keyboard shortcuts, set up
keyboard text expansions for things like "commandkey", "optionkey", "shiftkey"
etc that resolve to those symbols. I found it slightly fast than bringing up
the emoji picker with ^ + spacebar and typing e.g. "place name" for ⌘. (What
is the icon for spacebar??)

------
SwiftyBug
This page is terrible as a documentation/reference source. It's information is
indexed by keyboard shortcut instead of the other way around, by
functionality.

Intead of:

 __CMD + V __: Paste stuff

It should be:

 __Paste stuff __: CMD + V

Description of what it means to "paste stuff"

~~~
catacombs
You're overthinking it. What more do you want from "paste stuff?"

------
youngtaff
My 'favourite' MacOS pain is Shift-Command- left/right arrow when renaming
files in finder

Instead of selecting the whole filename as in documents it switches tab

After nearly a decade of using MacOS full time, it still catches me out every
time

~~~
chadlavi
shift-option-up/down does what you're talking about

------
jiripospisil
> Control-K: Delete the text between the insertion point and the end of the
> line or paragraph.

There's also "Command+Delete" that deletes the text between the insertion
point and the _start_ of the line or paragraph.

~~~
saagarjha
⌃K actually _kills_ the text.

------
ivanmaeder
Thanks for posting this. I had no idea files could be moved without the mouse!

    
    
      Option-Command-V: Move: Move the files in the Clipboard from their original location to the current location.

------
sawaruna
I need a keyboard shortcut expert to help me out with something specific in
Safari.

If I type a term into the URL bar, the bottom list of suggestions is for
'Bookmarks and History'. If arrow down to select one of these, it places it in
the URL bar, but the only text I can edit here is the title of the page, I
can't actually edit the URL. Is there a way to make the URL here editable
without actually visiting the page first? I could just press enter then
Command-L to edit it, but I'm looking for a way to append the URL first.

------
sgt
Using most of these on a daily basis. It's great that Apple paid attention to
this type of requirement from power users. One shortcut I didn't know about
though: option-command-eject (my bluetooth Apple keyboard does have an eject
button on it) allows me to put the Mac to sleep within 0.1 seconds. When
logging off in the evenings I've always used the menu bar's  -> Sleep, and
then carefully not moving the mouse afterwards so that I inadvertently wake it
up again.

------
chin7an
Cmd+Shift+<square_brackets> \- i.e '[' and ']' switch to the previous and next
tab respectively

I use this a lot, but is missing from this page. I'm pretty sure I didn't have
to customise it in the settings myself. Not sure how I stumbled on this, but
it works for me in all applications, native or electron (VS code is the only
one I have installed).

------
Razengan
One of the best things I love about macOS is the sheer beautiful consistency,
which although not perfect, is a breath of fresh air compared to Windows.

App-level shortcuts almost always use the Command key, global shortcuts
generally use Control, and Option/Shift are modifiers.

On Windows sometimes it’s Control, sometimes Alt, and sometimes the same task
has different shortcuts in different apps.

~~~
johnnyfaehell
What? I think macs being more consistent is in your head. It suffers the exact
same issue as Windows and Linux. The issue can't be solved since app
developers choose which the shortcuts and not os developers.

~~~
Razengan
> _I think macs being more consistent is in your head._

I've used both.

> _It suffers the exact same issue as Windows and Linux._

The issue is worse on Windows.

> _The issue can 't be solved since app developers choose which the shortcuts
> and not os developers._

Wrong. macOS/AppKit/Cocoa define a lot of standard menu items and shortcuts
and provide them to all native apps "for free".

If you look at the shortcuts list for a random Windows app, some shortcuts
will use Alt, some will use Control. On macOS, almost all shortcuts use
Command, and Option/Control are only modifiers.

Finally, on macOS, you can define custom shortcuts and edit existing shortcuts
for _any app_ , from the global Keyboard Preferences.

And you can add your own menu items as well via Automator etc.

------
SeanLuke
It would interest you to know that the emacs keybindings in MacOS came from
NeXTSTEP. See Figure 4-9 on page 4-7 of
[http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Software/OPENSTE...](http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Software/OPENSTEP/802-2110.pdf)

------
efxhoy
Another thing that Mac does well is the Swedish layout. ~ [] | \ {} are IMO
much better placed on the Swedish Mac layout than in Linux or Windows. In some
games in windows I can't even bring up the terminal with ~ as it requires a
space to be typed in after so the game doesn't register it as a keystroke.
Wtf.

~~~
wodenokoto
Funny. They are terrible on Danish and Norwegian layouts. Like, the pipe is
command+i and I always have to look up square and squiggly parens. I think
they are on top of normal parens .. or next to. But they are not indicated on
the keyboard and they take a modifier, but if you use the wrong modifier,
you'll change tab in your browser window. ~ is also not printed on the
keyboard and takes a modifier, causing a clash with the command-~ shortcut for
changing between windows in the same application.

I am utterly unimpressed and I want to sell my laptop just to buy a new one
with US layout.

------
timemct
Shout out to Cheat Sheet. Hold down Command for a few extra seconds and an
overlay pops up showing you all the keyboard shortcuts for whatever app is in
focus.
[https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/](https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/)

------
mayankkaizen
I've been Windows user all my life and recently got to use Macbook.

So far I've been unable to find a key shortcut to minimize ALL open windows
(like windows key + M in Windows). It is very annoying.

Also, coming from Windows, cut copy paste operation is also annoying on
Macbook.

------
kokey
I was surprised to discover by accident that many of these also work on an
iPad with the smart keyboard.

------
thomasfl
Since the first Macintosh was released in 1984, Apple has continued to add
keyboard shortcuts. The list of keyboard shortcut has now become ridiculously
long. By the way. Many of this shortcuts also work on iPad with a physical
keyboard connected to it.

------
gouggoug
One keyboard shortcut I haven't been able to find/create is one that moves my
mouse cursor from one monitor to another.

I often need to move my cursor from my third monitor on the left all the way
to my monitor on the right.

Anyone has a way of doing this?

------
gerjomarty
One shortcut that I actually miss from Windows is the one that effortlessly
moves windows left and right between monitors/screens.

I use Divvy to tile windows, but I really liked being able to flick a window
very quickly over to another screen.

~~~
DanielDe
I made an app called Window Flicker that may suit your needs!
[https://danielde.dev/window-flicker/](https://danielde.dev/window-flicker/)

Would love to hear what you think

------
albybisy
there is a key to "simulate" the left click of the mouse/touchpad (without 3rd
app)?

i have my left click touchpad broken and i have problem with long-press mouse
actions like moving files etc...

~~~
wtallis
There's an "enable dragging" option in the Accessibility settings, which lets
you double tap on an object to start a drag without needing to use the
physical button. You can choose whether the drag ends when you pick up your
finger, or if it continues until canceled with a tap. You can also set it to
start a drag with a three finger gesture instead of a double tap with one
finger.

------
wallflower
Such an exhaustive list... yet it omits one of my favorite timesaving
shortcuts. In Terminal, option + click will move your terminal cursor to
anywhere you want in the current line.

------
chadlavi
By far the most important keyboard shortcut in my work life is "shift-esc",
which marks all channels as read in Slack.

Not a system-wide one, of course, but very useful.

------
namelosw
MacOS is bloated and glitchy nowadays.

But I keep coming back to MacOS. It's funny but the No.1 reason for me is the
readline shortcuts.

The No.2 reason is rendering.

------
jeppesen-io
Until you can move windows/apps with the keyboard like chromeos, windows and
most linux wms, I'm going to be frusterated.

------
makz
A bit off-topic but, I've found I never use minimize, what's the use case for
that?

------
jetpackjoe
Seriousish question: Is there any linux distro (or option) to use Mac style
shortcuts?

~~~
kps
Not that I've found. You can mostly do it with KDE and a lot of shortcut
setting, but there are a lot of unconfigurable programs hardcoded to use
Windows shortcuts. Web browsing is a big one; Firefox used to let you do it be
setting ui.key.accelKey, but it's been buggy since the Quantum transition.

------
fauigerzigerk
Shift-Cmd-. shows hidden files in Finder. Also works in file selection
dialogs.

------
samstave
Wow, I am surprised at how many I knew, and how many I didnt know!

------
breatheoften
> Command-P: Print the current document

Can we please remove this one ...

~~~
donarb
Why is that?

~~~
breatheoften
1\. Bringing up the print dialogue is a slow process so its annoying when you
hit cmd-p on accident 2\. Print operation is done very rarely and not
frequently invoked in the middle of a keyboard-centric workflow -- how often
would it not be more or less equivalent keyboard interruption to use the Print
Menubar Action vs cmd-p? 3\. It would be nice to steal the shortcut from all
apps and remap it to something useful ...

------
zonabey
They're pretty good but try toggling back and forth between two windows from
different applications (NOT ENTIRE APPLICATIONS JUST TWO DIFFERENT WINDOWS)

------
spfjefe
oh snap command shift fiiivvvvee, that's a new one for me.

------
chb
Can't wait to read the n-gate summary for this post.

------
WrongThinkerNo5
It is curious how something like this gets published with inaccuracies like
that Command-L will create an alias in Finder, when it is actually Control-
Command-A.

~~~
Austin_Conlon
I emailed Greg Joswiak about this (it’s cool how some of their leadership will
respond to strangers’ emails:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24055149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24055149))
and he said the command had previously changed. It’ll be fixed soon on the
site.

Are there other inaccuracies?

