A Comprehensive Guide To Controlling Your Mac With Your Keyboard

In this special live video I look at many different ways to use your Mac keyboard to control everything. Learn how to launch apps, select text, manage your files, and so much more.



Check out A Comprehensive Guide To Controlling Your Mac With Your Keyboard at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with macmost.com.
On this special live edition of Mac most, I'm going to look at all sorts of different ways to control your Mac with just your keyboard.
As always, MacMost is brought to you thanks to its great Patreon supporters, go to macmost.com/patreon to learn more about the Patreon campaign, and join us there, get course discounts and all of that.
So what I want to talk about today in this special Live episode are all sorts of different ways to control your Mac with your keyboard.
So you've got things like keyboard shortcuts, you've got custom keyboard shortcuts, you've got system stuff, and hidden keyboard shortcuts, you've got things like text replacements, you've got custom things, in different apps, you've got accessibility functions, all sorts of different things, I have a huge list of different ways to control your Mac with your keyboard.
Each one of these could be its own episode, but I'm just putting them all together here.
And I'm just gonna talk about it here in this special live edition.
And let's go ahead and get started.
Notice at the bottom corner here, I've got this little keyboard here, it's the onscreen keyboard for your Mac.
And the reason I have it here is that I can hold the shift key down on my keyboard, and you can see the shift key is being held down there, hold the command key, you can see it's being held down there.
So as I show things, I'm going to call out what keyboard shortcuts I'm using.
But you can also see them visually on this little keyboard here.
So let's start with the basics.
Right, the most basic thing for keyboard shortcuts, is the keyboard shortcut you find in the menu bar.
So whatever app you're using the Mac, whether it's the Finder, a built in app or third party app, you've got the menu bar, and let's add some special utility or a game or something, you're gonna have a menu bar here, and the menu bar is part of the system, the app doesn't have to build the menu bar from scratch, it basically calls out to the system and says, Here's the menu items in the menu bar.
And the menu bar comes with functionality, including keyboard shortcuts.
So in the Finder, for instance, if I go to file, I could see New Finder Window is Command N, I could see new folder is Shift Command N.
And I could see all these other keyboard shortcuts here.
And these are built in to each app by the developers, the developer, decides on the keyboard shortcuts.
In this case, the Finder, of course, is from Apple.
But if you're looking at a third party app, whoever made that app decides on those keyboard shortcuts, you can see them all here.
And it's important to know the little special symbols here.
Like for instance, this symbol here is the command key.
If you look on your keyboard, you'll see command there that shift that control.
And you'll find other ones as well, as matter of fact, let's switch over to the keyboard here.
And we can see some of these here is the command key.
Here's the Ctrl key here is option, their shift.
And there's one more I want to point out the F n or globe key.
These are known as the modifier keys on your keyboard because you don't typically use them by themselves.
Although you can in some situations, typically you modify what's going on by using this key.
So for instance, pressing the letter C is just the letter C, type C, but Command C is usually copy.
So the Command key modifies the C key to be a command copy.
And you can use these in combination.
So there'll be some keyboard shortcuts that aren't say Command C, but Shift Option Command C.
And that's what we're gonna be looking at a lot here.
If you look here, at these keyboard shortcuts, you can see like this is Shift, Command N for new folder.
So for most things that you want to do in whatever app you're working in, like here in TextEdit, for instance, you could find a keyboard shortcut, if I wanted to make text bold, I go to format, and I can go down to font and bold.
And you can see command B is the keyboard shortcut.
So instead of using the mouse or trackpad at all, I can just use the keyboard, Command B will make that bold and it toggled it.
So command B again will take away the bolt and make it plain.
And that's the basics.
Most things are going to have keyboard shortcuts in the menus here, you can see how many there are I mean, just about everything's got them.
The developer is going to figure out like which of these menu items are used the most often, and it's going to make sure that there are good keyboard shortcuts there for them.
However, sometimes there are items that don't have keyboard shortcuts.
And sometimes these items are things you want to use, and the developer didn't think that you'd need keyboard shortcuts but you do.
For instance, just to take an example here under Format font, there's outline no keyboard shortcut for outline.
The only way to use outline appears to be Under Format font outlined selected using your trackpad or mouse, whom you've got outlined.
But wouldn't it be great to have a keyboard shortcut for that, if you did need to use it for some reason all the time? Well, you can customize keyboard shortcuts by going to System Preferences.
So this is outside of the app in System Preferences for the whole system, you can do this, we go into System Preferences here, we go to keyboard here.
And then we go from keyboard to shortcuts.
And then from there, we see this whole list on the left, have different keyboard shortcuts.
We're going to be looking at this more during this live video.
But you'll notice different categories here that do different things.
A lot of these are things that don't have menu items, like for instance, screenshots, there's no menu items control here for screenshots.
But they're all these screenshot commands, they're kind of system wide, you can think of them as hidden because they're not shown up here.
And this is where you control what they are, whether or not they're even active.
At the very bottom of this list is something called app shortcuts, which I think should actually be called Custom shortcuts, because that's what it really is.
This allows you to create custom shortcuts.
So we can go down here at app shortcuts, click the plus button, select which application we're creating shortcut for.
Now, the default is all applications.
But rarely do you want to use that, for instance, we're going to create one for the outline command, most apps aren't going to have an outline command, it's only going to be in thing to where you edit text and such.
So let's go and select this, and then go down to TextEdit.
I'm going to use a keyboard shortcut right there just to jump to t and go to TextEdit.
And say, for application TextEdit.
I want to create a shortcut for outline.
Now I need to type the menu title.
That's how it knows which menu item to create the custom shortcut for, we want to go and double check what that is.
If I go into format font, and there's outline, look at it closely capital O and then spelled outline, don't worry about the fact that it's in the Font submenu or the Format menu.
Those don't matter.
It's this word right here outline and getting that exactly right,
I had to type that perfectly.
So a place people get really tripped up here is actually having a menu item they want assign a shortcut for and they type what they think is exactly the menu item, but they're using the word as instead of in or they don't capitalize something.
And if it's not perfect, it's not going to work.
Then we're gonna do the keyboard shortcut.
So what should we do here? Well, we could do command over outline, I mean, Command B is for bold, but probably you know that Command O is standard shortcut for open.
So let's not use that.
Let's use Command Option O.
And you can see it puts it right there, add.
And now we could see it listed here, Command Option o outline in TextEdit.
Let's go back to TextEdit here, go to Format, Font and outline, and it shows that custom shortcut there.
So now let's try it Command Option o outline, and it will toggle it back and forth, just like the menu item here would toggle it back and forth.
So that's how you add a custom shortcut, getting rid of it is really easy.
You just go back to the same spot here.
You can select it, you can change it if you made a mistake, if you didn't get the the menu item correct.
You can change this if you want to try something different.
Don't be afraid to try different shortcuts for something because a question I commonly get is, well, how do you know if like command optional is in use by something? Is there a list somewhere? There's no list because each app is separate.
And it has its own set of shortcuts.
But don't let that stop you don't let that go.
You know, if you think okay, Option Command Oh might work.
Let's try it.
And if it turns out oh wait, now I just realized option Commando is used for something else, then you can always go back here and change it to something else.
It's not like your whole machine is going to shut down because you chose the same people shortcut, it's not going to be a real problem.
So you can change it here.
You can also with it selected, just hit minus, and now it's gone.
So it's easy to add and then kind of remove it if you decide you don't want it later on.
So that's how you do custom keyboard shortcuts.
But I want to say that you know, one of the things here is that you don't always want a keyboard shortcut for everything because you can't remember them all.
And there's going to be more and more conflicts, the more you add.
Sometimes you just want to access things from the menu using the keyboard without the trackpad or mouse.
You don't need quick access to it.
You just want some access through the keyboard.
Well, you can access anything in the menu using the keyboard without signing a keyboard shortcut to it.
It's just going to take a few more steps.
So first thing you want to do is you want to find a way to select things in the menu right now.
If you click in the menu here, so I click there i have used the mouse or trackpad.
But now from this point on, I'm only gonna use the keyboard, I can use the down arrow, you see, to go through the menu items, I can use the right arrow to go into a sub menu, down arrow to go here, and then return.
And it will select that item.
I didn't have anything selected here.
Let's try that again.
Font outlined, return there, it worked.
Except that the first thing I had to do was click here, can we eliminate that? Yes, let's go to System Preferences again.
And if I go into keyboard here, there is an item move focus to the menu bar Ctrl, F to grape, let's give that a try.
So here I am, I don't want to touch the mouse or trackpad, I'm gonna use Ctrl F to.
And you could see if you look closely, the Apple menu is now highlighted.
And if I use the right arrow, it now highlights TextEdit, File, Edit format, then down, down again, font to the right down, down, down, down.
Return, I did it without any mouse or trackpad, use, I don't have to take my hands off the keyboard.
Very useful when you want just keyboard control, but it's not like I'm going to use outline over and over again, it might be the only time I use it today or this week or this month.
But I just wanted to access it with the keyboard, instead of using the mouse or trackpad.
Now there are other ways to get to the menu bar, I want to show you one thing first, it's important.
It says here Ctrl F to.
But that's very dependent on something else.
If I go to keyboard here, see this checkbox.
This checkbox determines how the F keys on your keyboard or the touch bar if you have a touch bar Mac work.
Because if we look at each of those keys, they're actually two keys and one for instance, the f1 and f2 keys are f1 and f2.
And also screen brightness down and up.
Other keys control volume and playback controls things like that.
So there are two ways to think of these one is F keys or function keys.
The other as special feature keys, special features are like brightness, volume control, playback controls those symbols at the top.
If you have this checked, then just hitting those keys will make them work as the f1, f2 and f3 keys.
But if you turn this off, now every time you press them, they're going to work as the special keys like volume control up and down.
You can see I'm using F 11 and F 12 on my keyboard here.
And you can see how that's working.
If I select these, you can see how they change to the F keys, the F N key allege that you toggle this.
So if I have this off, now they're special feature keys.
If I hold the Fn key down, you can see how they change on that little keyboard there at the bottom left to F keys.
So the Fn key toggles this in a live way.
The checkbox is the default.
So having this checked means they work as F keys, which are the most useful to us right now doing keyboard shortcuts, but something to keep in mind.
Great.
So are there other ways to access the menu? Yes, turns out there's two other ways.
First is there's a new command and macOS Monterey, the F N key is actually now known as the globe key.
And new Macs have a globe and the letters F n on key.
Older, Mac's like mine just have F n which is why you see fn on that little keyboard there.
But if you hold that Fn key down, and then you press M, notice the Apple menu at the top left, that's highlighted the F n or globe key and M works just like Ctrl F to.
So a second way to get to it and maybe a little easier to remember I mean f n or globe and M M for menu, right.
Okay, so there's another way, there is a keyboard shortcut.
And we can actually look at it in System Preferences here under shortcuts.
It is right here in app shortcuts.
There's one here that's not a customizable one.
It's always here, show Help menu, Shift Command, and the slash key.
Slash also has the question mark on it.
So shift slashes question mark, easy to remember this is command question mark.
And that brings up the Help menu, watch shift command.
Question Mark brings up the Help menu.
Now you're typing in to search help, but you're also have the help menu selected.
So instead of starting the Apple menu on the left you starting at the Help menu on the right, now we can use the arrow keys and go to the left and do the same thing that I did before to select outline there.
I like this a little bit better partially because in older versions macOS control f2 didn't always work.
It worked like 98% of the time, but Command Shift question mark worked 100% of the time.
And I like it because you can do other cool things with the help menu.
So I'm going to activate it with just the keyboard and you can see how it's searching help you with things think that this if you search would give you documentation, and it does.
If you type something in here, it will show you documentation for that command.
But it also does something else, it'll show you where command is located.
So if I start typing outline, notice that it shows me four menu items.
And these correspond to menu items that have the word outline in now, now undo and redo both of outlining them.
Because I've recently used outline, font outline is what we're looking for.
And then there's something called Zoom Out, right, I just typed out, if I typed out, and then L, you can see that it's gone.
So notice here, I don't have to go to those help items, I can just go down now with the down arrow, and I can get to the one I want.
And notice it shows me where that is.
It's under Format font outline.
So I can learn where it is, if I forgotten where outline is, this is a way to figure it out.
I can learn where it is for next time.
Or I can just activate it from this menu here by clicking under the Help menu where it says found outline or hitting return.
So if I want to do outline, I could do it like this.
Shift Command, question mark, start typing, go down to the one I want return.
And you could see and turn it off.
I could do that with any menu item.
So maybe there is a keyboard shortcut.
But I forget what the keyboard shortcut is maybe I forget what the keyboard shortcut is for bold.
I do Shift Command question mark, I start typing bold.
There it is, Down Arrow, return bold.
Compare complete access to everything in the menu using Shift Command, question mark, and the help menu.
I think this is like one of the coolest keyboard shortcuts of the mall.
And it's one I use all the time.
I don't need to have access all the time to every command.
But I like to be able to get to it from the keyboard if I if I can.
Great.
So let's take a look at some other things here.
Let's go to app switching.
So I have a variety of apps open now.
And the great thing is is I can switch between them using just the keyboard, the command for that is command tab.
And continue to hold the Command key down as long as you hold the Command key down after the first command tap the apps which remains on the screen, I can switch between all my apps.
If I stop on an app and lift up on the command key, the app is unhidden or comes to the Front.
Command Tab again, and I can just tap through loops.
If I show the shift key down, it goes backwards and loops.
So I can go through each thing there.
Easy way to switch apps, you can also do other keyboard shortcuts in the app switcher.
So let's say I want to hide Pages, while I'm over it, I'm still holding the Command key down, I can use the H key and it hides Pages, and other H will unhide it and you could see it back there behind, it's not going to bring it to the front.
Unless I release.
You can also quit if I want to quit Pages, I can use q to quit, I won't do that right now.
But I can use q to quit.
So you can go through and say q q, q and q and quit a whole bunch of stuff using just the app switcher.
So the app switcher is kind of useful, and it's all keyboard controlled.
But I often get asked, Oh, how can you switch between windows.
So I'm gonna open up another window and TextEdit I've got two TextEdit Windows, you can see under window here actually have three, I have one that has my notes on another screen, I've got these two, I can switch between windows using the command to switch windows, which isn't okay, I thought it was in there.
But it's not in there.
It isn't System Preferences, though.
If you go here, move focus next window command and then the little backtick key which is above the key, the Tab key on the keyboard here.
So command backtick switches to the next text edit window.
Then the next one, which is the one you can't see off screen, and then the next one, you could switch between windows using that.
So really handy to do.
You also of course have Mission Control.
Mission Control is control up arrow.
And this is where you actually access multiple desktops where you can have full screen apps so I can go for instance, let's go into Pages here make Pages full screen, I'll do control up arrow and I ticket desktop one in Pages as to different spaces.
I can also say at another desktop I've got three desktops or two desktops and Pages there.
I can use control up arrow to go here.
And there's really not much else I can do in here.
I can't use the arrow keys to do anything.
But if I want to switch between spaces with the keyboard, I can do CTRL right arrow and control left arrow really handy.
So you can have many full screen apps or many desktops and easily switch between them using Ctrl left arrow and Control right arrow And let's go in, get rid of all these extra deck stops here.
Let's take a look at some other things that you can do.
One is something called an expo Ze, which is Ctrl, Down Arrow, keyboard shortcut, app Expo Ze, will bring up the Windows web open in that app, you can see I have two here.
And in many apps, the recent documents at the bottom, and this can be controlled by the keyboard.
If I use the right arrow, notice how the Recents here at the bottom are highlighted.
And I can actually select one if I want, I can go up.
And you could see, I can go between these two windows.
So if I had seven TextEdit, windows open a quick Ctrl, down arrow, and then I can use the arrow keys to go around in this list of recent and current documents and get to the one I want.
So really handy there.
A few other things I want to show you.
Their spotlight of course, for app launching spotlight is really useful.
Command Space brings up spotlight right here.
Let me center it.
There spotlight search.
Now you can use Spotlight to do a bunch of things keyboard only.
So if I want to launch an app like calculator, I can just type the app name the apps, usually the first thing highlighted there, I can press return, it launches the app Command space.
And I could do all sorts of other things, including get to system preferences.
If I start typing Bluetooth, for instance, I should be able to get to the Bluetooth system preferences.
There you go, it takes a second to appear.
You can see there's an app there.
But there's also System Preferences, you can see it says System Preferences there in the preview, I could press return and get to system preferences using it.
And of course, also you could get to files.
So you know, I could do you know, test dot txt, and I could find the file that way, quick way to navigate to a file without having to use the Finder at all.
So spotlight is a very handy keyboard only technique for finding things.
And if you want to go like through the items here, like oh, maybe this file isn't the one I want.
I can go down arrow and go to this one, command down arrow jumps down to the next section, or you get a preview on the right.
If you don't see a preview to the right, you can usually use the right the the tab to show it but there's nothing to show here.
In this case, you can get to things like searching the web.
So you can actually do a web search here without launching the browser first.
And I could search the web for test dot txt If I wanted to, for some reason, or start a finder search here as well.
There's some other cool things you can do.
For instance, if I wanted to get to this file, and I don't want to open the file, I just want to see where it is I can use Command R here and spotlight and will open up a new Finder window and take me there.
So that's kind of cool.
You can do things like if you wanted to look up a word you can do, I think Command L.
See, I thought Command L Shift Command L option command l thought it took you to the definition.
Command B will do a search with whatever you had in spotlight.
So you can start a web search.
By simply Command space, you type the search bar, do you want to search and do Command B and there you are in your default browser searching.
So some cool things doing spotlight but I don't actually like the idea of using spotlight to launch apps why? We'll remember when I typed Calc, and you can see there it took a second for calculators to appear as the first item.
A better way to do it is Launchpad.
Now Launchpad is down here, you have to go to the dock and click it.
Some of us have keys on our keyboard that are specific for Launchpad.
The newer Mac's don't but you can go into System Preferences.
And then you can go to keyboard.
And then one of the things here, launch pad and dock show launch pad and I've set it here to control spacebar.
You're gonna have to set it something I believe it's blank by default and then make sure it's turned on.
So instead of command spacebar for spotlight, I do CTRL spacebar for Launchpad.
Now I know somebody who are like Oh, Launchpad, it's a mess.
I don't use Launchpad.
I'm suggesting not to use it by clicking with the mouse or trackpad.
But use it just like you would spotlight.
So when spotlight if I want to draw on a calculator, I do Command Space.
Calc, wait for calculator appear.
Return there's calculator.
Now, let me do the same thing with Launchpad.
I've got control space, Calc.
And you could see how it narrows down return and calculator launches, the difference being it doesn't seem to have any delay.
And it's only apps right you're not gonna get documents and dictionary definitions and you know, sports scores and all that stuff.
It's just for apps.
So I like setting a keyboard shortcut using launchpad to launch apps.
But let's look at one other thing you can do.
Down here.
The dock, of course has your most common apps, you can actually do a lot in the dock with just the keyboard.
To access the dock, you've got to go in System Preferences.
Let's see, under shortcuts, Launchpad and dock, you can turn dock hiding on and off here with Option Command D, which is really useful.
But move focus to dock is usually Ctrl f3.
So let's do that Ctrl f3, and it brings up the dock and notice how the Finder is selected.
And I can use the arrow key to move to what I want.
And let's say I want to launch reminders, return and reminders launches.
That's kind of handy.
You can also use one of those new function keys F n or the globe key in D, and it should get you the doc, not sure why it's not right there.
Well, let's just stick with Ctrl f3.
And notice how it stays on reminders to it doesn't go back to the Finder.
Plus, you can access other things in the dock.
So for instance, I can go and go up and I get get the menu for reminders for contacts for calendar, and then go down into options, you can use the arrow keys to access all this stuff.
So some of these have special functions.
Like here in Safari, I can go to a window and Safari, create a new window, a new private Window, Show All windows, I can quit right from the dock, Launchpad, I go up and actually I get the list of all the apps and alphabetical order.
And I can use a key to jump to a letter.
So that's kind of handy finders got all sorts of extra, you know, favorites and common things in here.
So you have like full dock access using the keyboard Ctrl f3, I'm pretty sure that Fn and D is supposed to do the same thing or the glow key and D is supposed to do the same thing.
Oh, no, it's not f n and d it is FNAFN in D turns on and off dictation.
We're gonna look at that in a minute here actually, that's kind of interesting.
So Fn and a is Doc, or Ctrl F three, either one.
And you have complete control dock dock is great as a switcher as a launcher, and being able to do various different things in the dock.
Now, let's take a look at keyboard navigation when you're talking about text, because that's a whole other thing.
Let's go back here to TextEdit.
And I want to edit text.
And this is a primary spot where I want to keep my hands on the keyboard.
Because if I'm typing, I don't want to have to lift off both my hands, maybe I have them on the home row, you know, maybe that tight tight every time I touch the mouse or keyboard it kind of you know puts me off and I have to get back into typing mode.
So you can do a lot with just the keyboard.
Obviously, you can use the arrow keys, left and right to move the cursor.
And this blinking line here you can see just before the word jumps between after Fox right there, that's actually the cursor.
This is actually the pointer anything you move with the the trackpad or mouse to the pointer.
This is the cursor text cursor.
So I can move back and forth.
And it's really handy when editing text because now you want to go back add a word here or whatever.
If you will, the Option key down, it will jump by word because if you have a lot of text, it's tough to, you know, backspace over everything.
Let's actually open up a recent file here.
Something with more text in it.
There we go.
And I'm gonna make this a little bigger so you can see it.
If I'm here and I want to like backspace all the way you know, I can hold down the left arrow key, and we'll eventually get there.
But option will go by word.
So option left goes by word option, right goes by word much faster.
If you're editing text, use options left and right to get where you want.
You can also use down and up to jump by line by option down will go to the end of the current paragraph.
Or if you're already at the end, it'll go to the end of the next paragraph.
Option up goes to the beginning of the current paragraph and the next time it goes to the beginning of the previous paragraph.
So you can jump through your text pretty quickly with option up and down.
You've got lots of other cool things that you can do in text editing you can do if you have home and and buttons on your keyboard.
If you have an extended keyboard you could do and to go to the end at home to go home.
It just scrolls it doesn't change where the cursor is, but if you don't have those, you still can use the F N key in and believe it's et Cie, left and right, left goes home, right goes and now page up and page down.
If you have those actually does move the cursor, and it scrolls through, you can use F n and down arrow and Up Arrow s page up, page down.
So there are handy to use.
You've got selection, if you want to select something, let's say okay, I'm going to use the keyboard go here.
And let's say I want to make this bold.
I don't need to select it.
First, I can hold the shift key down and right arrow, I had an extra key there, shift, right arrow, and key bright, outgrowing and select something as long as the shift key is held down, it will extend the selection.
If I lift up the shift key and use the arrow you can see the selection goes away, I can use that conjunction with any of those other shortcuts.
So Option Shift, right arrow selects this word, next word, next word next word very quickly.
Now you can command B to bold that.
So if you want to do the same thing with like, options, Shift Down Arrow, you know, you can go by paragraph, that kind of thing.
So really handy to know those.
And that shift can help you do the the selection.
There's some weird ones, too.
There's an old program called Emacs.
That was for terminals.
And you still have I still have it actually, I don't know if you have it anymore in terminal on a Mac.
But it's a text editor that was in the terminal days before mouse, mice and keyboards were around.
And there were some standard keyboard controls there because they didn't have a lot of terminals did have arrow keys and stuff.
So a lot of those still work in most Mac text editing apps.
So for instance, if I do Ctrl, the Ctrl Keynote Command A and B, it goes back, f goes forward.
If I do a it goes up, or the beginning of the paragraph, and e to the end of the paragraph.
If I do p it goes upline and downline, if I do CTRL N, H, it deletes.
So another way to use the Delete key is Ctrl.
H ever went for Delete on a Mac.
I know Windows users, you know switched out where they went for delete.
Well, you can do CTRL in D for for delete.
Also, you can use the Delete key on your Mac with the F N key held down.
So f n and delete is for delete.
That's what I would use.
Although, as a lifelong Mac user, I never for Italy, it's only seems to be Windows users that need that.
You also have other ways to deal with things.
One is oh, this is weird one ctrl T transposes two letters.
So you see the t and h there with a blinking cursor between them ctrl T transposes them, okay.
CTRL O is kind of useful Ctrl o insert a new line at this location, but leaves the the cursor there, if I do return, you can see the cursor to the next line.
If I do CTRL O, it creates a new paragraph, but the cursor is still the old paragraph.
And finally, there's you probably no obviously you can do copy and paste by slug something.
I can copy, I can cut I can paste, I use the keyboard shortcuts for that.
So Command X will cut and Command V will paste.
There are emacs commands for the same thing, but it's not the same thing.
It's going to use a different buffer.
So if I select some text, like that, and I use Ctrl K for kill, it deletes what's there but puts it in a buffer.
Now if I do CTRL y, it yanks it from the law firm puts it back, k and y kill and yank.
But it's different than copying paste.
So if I were to copy, say this word, Command C, and kill this word Ctrl K, and then go here and do Command V to paste and then do CTRL y to yank you can see it's getting it from two different places.
Kind of neat stuff.
Um, let's, that's pretty much most of what I want to show for tech stuff.
I do want to point out there's text replacements as well.
So let's switch back here.
And let's say I go to System Preferences again, and to keyboard and change to text and then look at text replacements and you can see I've got some set here that ideas you hit plus here, you type something that you would never in a million years type normally, like maybe stumps a word starting with an exclamation point, you know, an ABC and then over here, you type you know something else.
And it could be you know, long it could be whole paragraph or whatever as you want.
And now, whenever I'm in a text entry kind of mode, I can type this exactly.
And then the next thing I press space or return whatever replaces it really handy.
I mean, you could put like, a bunch of paragraphs in there, sometimes what you want to do is like, take this and copy it, and then go here, and then you go in, and you you know, paste it in here.
And you know, then it's like several lines of text.
You could always select it and remove it or remove that one.
I've got some other stuff set here.
Like the exclamation point, thanks, does this entire thing here.
You can have, you know, just a single character, like an emoji pizza character, you know? So like, Let's try these if I do, you know, thanks.
And then return to put that whole thing in there quick way to respond to an email, pizza like that, or was that the?
Or was it dot pizza? Yeah, dot pizza does that.
So now I don't have to remember how to get to, you know that emoji if I do that all the time.
It's kind of handy.
Um, so yeah, some more Mac shortcuts here.
Oh, before I finished completely with tax, let's go over to Pages, I'm going to show you one interesting thing and Pages say I want to change the style.
Something I want to make this a title style, click here make a title style.
There is a way to set a keyboard shortcut for that if you go here, and you go to title, sorry, here, and then I click on this little arrow there, you can see there's a shortcut.
And I could set an F key from f1 to f8 as a shortcut, here, so I can easily set that the same thing for character styles, I bring this over.
So I could set a character style, like here's the emphasis character style, I could do shortcut, and that's underneath me.
But you can see how that is just f one to F eight.
Same thing for Keynote, and Numbers.
So really handy, if you have a certain style you want to use for emphasis, you know, it's like maybe a color and a font and a size and it's bold, you know, you could set like that is F four.
And then you know, select text and hit f4 for it works in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, abusing something else like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Word has its own whole universe have like macros and keyboard shortcuts that you can customize inside the app.
Alright, let's go.
I'm gonna go into finder now, and show you how you can control all sorts of other things with the keyboard.
For instance, here I am in the Finder, and I've got, you know, window open, and I can of course, click on things I want, I can open up these folders, I can double click on a file here, open it, but this can all be controlled by the keyboard as well.
So I'll move the pointer to the side, I'm gonna use the arrow keys, if I go down, you see immediately it's going to select the first thing there, I can continue to go down, I can go to the right and open something up, I'm in list view, if I was in column view, I would go down into a column there.
Right left, I could go to one of these files, I can, if I press return, that's renamed.
But if I were to do Command O, it opens up the file.
So really handy.
Let me switch back using the apps which are there to this.
And then you can see I could do all sorts of things.
Using the keyboard I can navigate around in the Finder, even in like icon view, I can navigate around here.
If I want to open a folder command, oh, we'll open it up.
I'm going to go back up, command, up arrow goes up a level, it's one of the most useful commands when using a finder.
Let's see here.
There you can use also even for like throwing things away, like you know, let's go here in the Finder, go in here and do Command Oh, if I want to delete this, how do I drag it to the trash? Well, if you look here, under file, you could see that you've got moved to trash is command delete.
So I can use Command Delete to delete the file.
You can also do things it's let's go into Safari here.
And let's talk about tabs.
So let's open up a new tab in Safari, and another tab in Safari, I've got several Safari tabs Ctrl tab.
So the Ctrl key and tab let you go between tabs.
So you think of like command tab lets you go between apps Ctrl tab, let's go between tabs shift will, you know Ctrl Shift Tab, you can go backwards.
So you can navigate around a tabs but that also works in other apps.
So I have a second tab here Command T to open up a new tab and Ctrl tab lets me go between these tabs here inside of finder.
And then there's also if you look here, there's something called tab overview or show all tabs shift command and backslash.
So Shift Command backslash brings up all the tabs and you even have the ability to, you know, add a new one there.
Let's see I'm not getting good.
Doesn't seem like, oh, I can use CTRL tab here to go between these.
So same thing here in Safari, Shift Command up arrow, let's see was that shift troll, up arrow.
Let's take a look.
Tab overview should be Show tab overview, Shift Command, and backslash.
Now guess that's not what I was doing before.
And now I can't use the arrow keys here, but I can control tab, oh, Control tab is actually going to work inside this, but I can search tabs.
So you know, I can bring it down to this and get to a tab.
So not great in terms of keyboard access there.
But something to keep in mind.
What else do we got? Oh, let's say I am going to save something.
I'm going to go into TextEdit.
Here again, let's create a new document.
And I'm going to save brings up the Save Dialog.
So this is a typical dialogue, save dialogues, print dialogues, things that come up that you have to deal with right now.
And you've got buttons like save, cancel that kind of thing.
Any button that's blue like this, if I do return, it's going to activate it.
So I could type a new name and hit return.
And I can use this entire thing without ever having to go to the trackpad or mouse.
If I want to cancel though, there are two ways to do that.
One is the Escape key, the Escape key will cancel another is command period that activates cancel right there.
So you have the ability to do that.
Also, if you are say, going to quit something, let's, you know, if I were to quit command Q.
You see it says Oh, you haven't saved this.
I can hit return for save.
And we'll save that file name, command period for cancel and it won't quit.
If I want delete command, delete lax, I'll activate the Delete key here.
Really handy one, if you want to create something quick and TextEdit.
But you're done with it, you don't want it anymore, you quit.
And it says oh do you want to save this, you don't have to navigate to delete, you can do Command delete, do Command period to cancel there.
Like see when you have any pop any menu like this, see that's like for selecting fonts, you may think you need to use the cursor or the mouse rather for this.
But you actually can.
Anytime you're in here, it's like oh, this is a long list, I want to jump right to the w's for the fonts, hit W see it jumps right down.
And then you can use the arrow keys to go up and down.
So you know Helvetic, I can type H E, and athletic as they are at the top, let's do C copperplate C O, P, and you could tell jumps right there.
And I could you know, go up and down as I want any kind of list.
Anything even like let's do like format, see this here, if I'm gonna go to outline and go to Oh, are actually I have to go into this menu, I go to Oh, and it jumps down to it.
Always remember, you can use letters in different drop down and pop up menus to jump around.
It's really handy.
Especially if you know, your alternative is just hitting the down arrow key a whole bunch of times.
Let's go into it.
I brought up this browser here with a form and notice that there's a bunch of fields here, you can use the tab key to jump around and stuff.
So let me reload this page here.
Let's say okay, a business question with this form.
If I use the tab key, notice it selects the first item.
And I could go down to the next one, go down to the next one.
And you can use tab and Shift Tab to go back and forth.
And it's a really handy way to navigate around in complex forms in most apps, but most of the time you run into forums, it's in the web browser.
I mentioned the do shortcut keys for various things before you have control or sorry f n or the globe key and M for the menu bar.
You've got Fn and a for the doc.
You also have F n and c for control center really handy and you can't do anything else you can't DOWN ARROW unfortunately, and select things you can control center, although I'm going to show you a way that you kind of can later on you can there's a lot probably coming in the future I think with this I think is the beginning Notification Center is F n n and it brings it up which is handy even though you can't navigate around because Sometimes you just want to see stuff like times or news, or, you know, the weather or whatever and you know, Fn and and to open and close the Notification Center is really handy.
I'd said, F, A globe key, and D for dictation.
For most apps, you can go to, you know, enter full screen is now globe and F.
So I'm gonna take this window here, full screen, globe and F globin.
F to get out of it.
an emoji viewer, if I'm going to type this, you probably know the old keyboard shortcut Ctrl Command space, and it brings it up.
But you can also do fn or globe key and E for emoji.
That's really handy.
So those are some good things to know.
Now, how about some other stuff? A lot of cool things you can do with keyboard go from the shortcuts app.
So let's launch the shortcuts app.
Now, the shortcuts app,
I can create shortcuts.
And they don't have to be complex shortcuts.
I'm creating a new one here.
And let's say I just want to launch an app.
That's it.
I want to have a keyboard shortcut to launch an app.
So I type launch here comes up with open app, that's fine news that let me click here to select the app.
Which app do I want to launch? Let's do calculator, open calculator.
And this will call this launch calculator.
And now I have a shortcut that will work.
Let's do it with the keyboard.
Click here.
Going to say add keyboard shortcut.
I'm going to do control option command C for it.
And hope that nothing conflicts with that.
Notice it says users quick action Services menu that becomes live once I assign this keyboard shortcut.
Let's hide shortcuts here.
And if I look in TextEdit services, I see launch calculator now because it's a service member.
And there's the keyboard shortcut.
So now in anything finder services, and it's I don't see it there launch calculator, I don't see what the keyboard shortcut, which may indicate that there is a conflict.
Let's go back into shortcuts.
And let's change this to shift control option command C.
And wow, that's not do that.
Let's add keyboard shortcut.
Try it again.
All right, all those things.
And then let's go back to find her and see Yep, now now I've chosen there's no conflict there.
So great.
I'm in any app I want.
Find her.
For instance, I do all of that.
It's going to launch calculator because it's going to run that shortcut.
Now you can do all sorts of things with this, like, let's change this to a set of launching or opening calculator.
I could open File,
Open File, and I could select a file to open.
So if there's some file, like every day I write into like a diary or log file or something, I can actually find a keyboard shortcut that opens up that file on the default app.
I could do all sorts of different things.
I could have it, you know, speak the time, let's do that date.
And there we go, speak, speak text, one goes into the other.
I can change some things about it.
I'm still still calling it launch calculator can fix that later.
Right now, if you use the keyboard shortcut.
June 3 2022, out of 10:49am, I assume you can hear that.
It was loud enough.
Hey, so if you you know, ever want to, you know, have a keyboard shortcut where I'll tell you the time.
There you go.
All sorts of stuff.
I mean, you could even do like, if I do quit, I do quit app.
But I could say quit not an app.
But all apps except, you know, zoom.
Don't quit zoom.
Now I have a keyboard shortcut for like, Oh, my goodness, I forgot.
I have a Zoom meeting.
Right now it's starting.
I've got stuff all over my desktop, run the shortcut, everything quit.
I'm not focused on Zoom.
So there's like things you can do like that.
So don't look past shortcuts for doing things, combining things launch two apps, launch open to files open for files that you need, all sorts of different things that you can do in shortcuts, so deep here, and you can control it with just the keyboard universally on your Mac like that.
Some other stuff, let's go into System Preferences.
There is some stuff where you can do keyboard control, it's going to keyboard keyboard.
Let's go to let's see, in shortcuts, use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls.
So let's go that's off right now.
And if I go to Safari here and I'm in this window, and I do tab, it's going to tab between these things and it's also gonna hit some other stuff.
Here's another field over here.
It's going to you know, do various things.
Let's go to say MacMost homepage, and I could do tab and it's going to go between various things here.
Now, if I turn this on use keyboard navigation to move folks between controls, then it's going to actually go to different things in here should be, let's take a look at text edit, for better example.
Text edits not going to be good, because it's going to go between these.
So I think if I tap here, I'm just going to files, I thought Safari be a good example of this.
Oh, you can see now when I tap through, you can solve it, see how it highlighted those controls up here.
As I tab, there you go.
So I can tap between various things with that on.
But if I have that off, it's not going to do the same.
It's not going to tab between those items.
So you can use this to have more focus between controls as you use tab and use keyboard navigation tab and Shift Tab.
But there's like an ultimate, you know, higher level to this.
If I go, this is new in Monterrey, if I go to accessibility, I go to full keyboard access.
So I'm gonna go in here to keyboard, enable full keyboard access, I've got options here, there's various things I can do.
And there's all these commands.
And this is actually going to turn the Tab key into a modifier key.
See how this is highlighted.
All the files are highlighted, that's the control I have selected down.
But if I do tab, and I do say, tab, ah, oh, it's it is doing it on the wrong screen.
So if I did on the right screen tab, each note, it's still gonna do it on the wrong screen, probably have to close everything with the Finder.
Interesting, okay, so tab H usually brings up controls here.
But fortunately, it's doing it on the screen I'm not using.
So I can't really show you that.
But it allows you to do lots of things like for instance, I can move forward between items, notice how it's up here.
And it's moving all through these items here, just tabbing forward, it gives me much more control over what basically almost anything, I can click, I can get to, if I have enable full keyboard access turned on.
And I can activate anything that's highlighted with the space, if I'm inside of a group, so it shows a bunch of files, I can use the arrow keys, let's see if I can get back here.
So see, I'm inside a group here.
Now I can use the tab to get to that group and arrow keys to move around in it.
And space actually will then select things.
This takes some practice, I don't think this is meant to be like something you occasionally use.
This is something you use all the time and you really get used to.
But it's definitely something you should know about.
And that you should, you know, if you really want full keyboard access, you can use I believe, if you're using full keyboard access, then you can do f n and c for control center.
And then I can tab and see how I can use Control Center now.
Shift Tab to go back, I can go you know to something else.
Let's see display.
And it can do up and down arrow.
So you can control control center and other things if you have full keyboard access turned on.
So something for you to play around with.
Let's go and look at some other cool things.
Mouse Keys and other accessibility function is Mouse Keys.
If you want to control everything with the keyboard, you can do pointer control.
Alternate control methods, Enable Mouse Keys.
And now if you look under options here, there's some options.
Now the keys 789 are used.
Let's see.
No, it's not going to do it.
Hold on.
Keyboard, pointer control mouse keys, I full keyboard access off.
Oh because I have a I'm sorry, I have a numeric keypad if you have a numeric keypad who uses the numeric keypad.
If you don't have a numeric keypad, it's going to use other keys.
I think it tells you in the help here, I believe it's 789 you I O J K L as kind of a trackpad of keys with i being clicking with my keyboard here.
I'm actually using you know the I have the numeric keypad.
I'm actually using the 123456789 there and a five for clicking.
So I can actually hold the eight key down, go up, hold the seven key down, go to the left, and turn it off by clicking with the five.
There you go.
So not that handy, really, unless your trackpad or mouse is broken.
And you need to be able to do something like right now while you're waiting to get a new one.
Let's see.
Some quick things I want to show you.
I showed you screenshots before, but I think it's worth looking at again, screenshots a lot of people like these are some of my least favorite keyboard shortcuts, these because these are the old ones.
This one here, does everything, Shift, Command five, brings up this whole set of controls here and let you choose all your options.
So certainly, if you need to save the picture of the screen as a file, and you do it over and over and over again really quickly, then learn this keyboard shortcut, but it's occasionally you need to do it.
Forget these four keyboard shortcuts, and just know Shift Command five to access all screen capture and recording options.
Here's a cool thing.
I often get asked, hey, it looks like you can do everything with keyboard shortcuts except assign tags to files, right? I want to assign a tag to this file.
If I go under file, you can see there's tags dot dot dot.
Great.
I want to bring that up with a keyboard shortcut app shortcuts.
Plus, let's do tags.dot.in.
What finder keyboard shortcut? Option Command T.
Great.
Now that should work right? I go back to finder.
Let's look file tags.
Nope, it's not applied.
It doesn't work the tags dot dot dot seems to like buck the whole trend and not be usable.
Except you can use it.
Here's what you got to do.
You go to find your preferences.
You go to tags here and tags, see these favorite tags, you gotta get rid of them.
Drag each one out until there are no favorite tags left anymore.
They were tagged with just something you click anyway, any tags that you want to see, really easily just check them here.
Okay, now, when I go to File, tags, the favorites are gone.
And tags dot dot dot has the keyboard shortcut.
So Command T, there it is those items that I selected with a checkmark there right underneath, and I can arrow down to them and easily assign them.
And I could easily just type.
So you could see like that.
So super easy.
Now to apply tags, using keyboard shortcut, that trick was in Preferences to get rid of the favorites out of this box.
Another thing is keyboard navigation in the Finder, you know you've got the sidebar here, you can access that with keyboard shortcuts.
But the Go menu has a ton of common locations, you can jump to like your home folder, like desktop, like documents and all of that.
In addition, you can use Go to Folder Shift Command G, like that, and type a path.
And the path doesn't have to be perfect.
Like I can start typing doc for documents.
And it's going to kind of try to figure out what it is I want to do.
So it should let's help it out here.
It should come up with document right there.
Oops.
Let's do tilde us slash documents.
So you could see how it goes to it like that.
But now, in the future.
Let's see if I just type documents because it's recent.
You see, now it's got those selected, Shift Command G and typing allows you to get anywhere in the Finder kinda like using Terminal.
Another thing I want to point out, as you know, kind of want to finish this off here, I if you go to System Preferences, keyboard, there's this button for modifier keys.
This allows you to change the modifier keys and control the Caps Lock key.
So for instance, I've got caps lock set to be an F N key and additional Fn key because my key word has it all the way over on the right because it's an extended keyboard.
So I now have an FN key where the Caps Lock key is but I could set it to CAPS LOCK, I could set it to no action and kill the CapsLock key or I can make it another command key or whatever I want.
You could switch control with command to command with control if you like I don't recommend doing that.
But it's useful to know you have those functions here.
Another thing I want to point out is the video here I'm going to show you a video not gonna have time to show you this.
But I've got this special video I did a while ago on key binding Next key bindings are super advanced technique for keyboard shortcuts.
Basically, when you touch a key on your keyboard, it sends a signal to your Mac that says this key was pressed, the Mac looks that up in a table and says, Oh, you press the letter A, what am I supposed to do with that? Oh, the letter A means you've typed a.
And that's what happens.
You can get in between that and basically say, No, the letter A no longer means Ay, ay means something else.
And you do that with key bindings, and I show you how, in this video, I'll link to it or you can just search for this cert backmost key bindings, this should come up first.
And there's some interesting things because there are like keys that map to functions.
Like, you know, obviously, the modifier keys, or, you know, pressing the Up Arrow or the home button or things like that.
There are some functions that are not mapped to from any key on the keyboard that do some special things.
And you can map something to it.
So you can, you know, do some cool stuff, it's pretty advanced, you have to edit these little system files, and not system files are actually user library files.
So you're not changing the system, you're changing your user account.
But but it's worth looking at.
Even if you think you might not use it, check that out.
The last thing I want to point out is you might run out of keys, right? I mean, how many Keyboard shortcuts can you possibly assign?
Well, a couple of ways to get more keys on your keyboard.
One way is to get a control surface, you can buy an expensive thing people that stream and you know do music and video editing have like these control decks that are like extra button, there's new plug it in, and it creates these extra buttons.
And they've got software and they can do like shortcuts with the software, MIDI keyboard, sometimes you can do stuff like that.
If you have an extended keyboard, one with the numeric keypad on the right, each one of those number keys is actually a different key than the number keys at the top of the keyboard.
So you could assign a keyboard shortcut to say command num pad to numpad two different than the number two.
And then you now have like all of these extra keys, I mean, you've got nine keys, then you can do command, you can do control, you can do option you can do option command, control command, all of that.
A lot of keyboard shortcuts you can assign to a extended keyboard and not interfere with all the letters and other default keyboard shortcuts.
You don't have an extended keyboard, you can always get one of these.
You get wired, little keypads for 20 bucks, 30 bucks for like a Bluetooth one.
And basically it just adds a second keyboard to your Mac, you can have multiple keyboards on your Mac.
But this adds one that has the num keys and other things on it.
And then you can assign keyboard shortcuts using those.
So if you find say you're using GarageBand, edit music or iMovie to do stuff, and you really want to have keyboard shortcuts and you want to do it cheaply without buying like a $200 you know stream deck thing with buttons on it.
You can get like a $20 keypad, plug that in and assign keyboard shortcuts to that.
So that's a ton of stuff.
Why didn't even get to every single thing I wanted to talk about.
But I think this gives you plenty to investigate, if you like using keyboard shortcuts.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode.
And thanks for watching.
Bye.Related Subjects: Accessibility (27 videos), Keyboard Shortcuts (58 videos), System Preferences (116 videos)
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