My macOS keyboard shortcuts
jamieonkeys.dev
jamieonkeys.dev
The dedicated Cmd key for most operations (which doesn't conflict with, say Ctrl+C in the terminal) is super-convenient. The consistency across apps is... something that you can't appreciate until you experience it. And the pervasive Emacs-like text navigation shortcuts throughout the system are productivity boosters. I like how someone else described the "right side of the keyboard" as "keyboard Siberia" -- I have not touched it for years and have not missed any of those special keys in minimalistic keyboards that don't have them.
Until I tried to actually move off of macOS last year. The different shortcuts on Windows were and still are super-painful. For months, I fought those and tried to use macOS-like shortcuts on Windows. You can see my AHK configuration here if you are interested in adopting something similar: https://jmmv.dev/2021/07/macos-ahk.html
Recently, though, and because that setup is problematic at times and because I decided to remove macOS altogether from my machine... I'm trying to retrain my hands and adapt to the non-macOS shortcuts. It's painful and I miss the macOS consistency a lot. On the plus side, however, after a few weeks of this on Windows, I booted into a FreeBSD desktop and could navigate the system pretty well :) Some more details here: https://jmmv.dev/2022/03/a-year-on-windows-shortcuts.html
You don't even have to have a third party app to snap left||right or maximise via the keyboard, as these are available (behind Option either in the menu or when hovering over the traffic lights, but once you bind them they're always there, example is my bindings):
Ctrl+Option+Return: Zoom
Ctrl+Option+Left: Move Window to Left of Screen
Ctrl+Option+Right: Move Window to Right of Screen
Again in Keyboard pref pane, Shortcuts tab, under Mission Control there's also Switch to Desktop 1-N keyboard shortcuts but you first have to create as many virtual desktops (a.k.a Spaces) as you want to have all the shortcuts show up. Make sure to disable "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" under Mission Control pref pane to keep them predictable. Since the total count is spread across display heads, I create 5 on my left screen and 5 on my right one. I also disable "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with windows open for that application", otherwise clicking on a Dock icon jumps me to another Space when I just want to have the app activated. As a i3 user on Linux (which of course is in another league) this brings macOS kind of close enough in behaviour to not be too jarring for me when I jump from one to the other.
Another one of my favourites is Paste and Match Style, which is absolute genius.
In every app's menu bar (so like Safari or Chrome), there is the Window menu item. If you open that then press and hold the Option key on the keyboard, you'll see some alternative commands - two of them being:
Move Window to Left Side of Screen
Move Window to Right Side of Screen
Once added, as you've said - once they are bound they will appear in the Window menu now as well.
I have shortcuts for left/right-third and two-thirds, as well as left/right half, which I must use dozens of times a day. Oh and I use ASZX to push stuff to the 4 corners too.
A lovely little utility app.
Haven’t tried magnet before, just wanted to throw another option out there.
Used Moom and Spectacle, and now using Magnet as well on personal machines (actually it was the first one I ever used back when it was called Window Magnet), but the work laptop has a policy about vetted apps you can install, and only Spectacle is allowed, which I don't like personally, so I use the macOS native stuff there.
I started configuring these shortcuts due to the powerful and plentiful shortcuts in Jetbrains IDE, which always seemed to be masked by some KDE default shortcut or another.
For instance, why is there no way to minimize to desktop? Having to use Command+Button to go to beginning/end of a line? A horror for coding.
My favorite pain point: @ in some regional keyboard layouts for Win/Linux is ALTGR+Q, whereas the keys with the same physical action in MacOS close the program. Fun when writing emails, or using passwords and logins.
Also, whether its due to capability or lack thereof, MacOS has the most custom UIX apps/addons/plugins of any OS. Heck, our corporate Macs come with some of those preinstalled.
There is I think. Something like Cmd+F3? I use this a lot.
But after doing that transition myself many years ago and then back to Windows now... I think that the macOS shortcuts are objectively better. The consistency across the whole system is hard to describe unless you have experienced it, and the distinction between Ctrl and Cmd is quite ergonomic.
I'm kind of sad that, in 1995, when Microsoft introduced the Win and Menu keys... these did not become _the_ keys to drive shortcuts. I think it's only until recently that extra shortcuts have been added to the Win key.
Cmd-arrow keys work fine for this, if you are willing to take your hands off the home row, which I am generally loathe to do.
The Mac inherited emacs keystrokes from the NeXT days, so control a (beginning of line) and control e (end of line) “just work” in any text widget. Likewise open a line, kill a line, previous or next line.. .with 40+ years of those wired into my fingertips I didn’t even notice that I was using them!
You can then use ⌘ + Tab [+ Arrows] to get back to both minimized windows and hidden apps. Combined, this window-access flow is simple yet powerful.
Edit: spelling.
i3wm is easily one of the key things keeping me using Linux as my daily driver (personal + work). It's so simple yet deeply configurable. Sure, it takes a bit of time to tweak and get used to but IMO it has paid off massively. It has made using a computer just so much more of a joy. Whenever I use Mac and Windows I really miss i3wm. I spend barely any time moving Windows around - everything Just Works (with the caveat of some tweaking - but my config file is only about 100 lines of i3 declarations) and I've barely had to change it in 5 years.
I do go around shilling i3wm here and there on hn, purely just because it has provided me actual joy and I want others to know about it! I know the Apple crowd are fans of everything Just Working, and i3 comes with sensible defaults to enable that.
[0]: https://i3wm.org/
And yes, I know you can use KDE or Gnome as a DE to i3's WM, but the things you have to do to get it to work are very brittle and it feels very hacky, makes it not worth it.
Haven't had enough money for a Mac in the past decade, but this article makes a good case that I could at least tolerate it coming from i3!
It’s pretty awesome, I just wish someone would start an equivalent project for sway.
Rumor has it the M2 will.
The biggest issue I have is that by disabling SIP, you can't use Apple Pay or use iOS apps on MacOS. The only 2 apps I wanted to use were Overcast and Apolo, so it's not a huge loss, but I'm still disappointed.
The second issue is that the Scripting Additions were written for x86 and need to be completely rewritten for ARM (not totally sure about this, I don't know much about low level OS programming). This also means that the scripting additions behave a little erratically. The additions also need to be manually updated for every version of MacOS, so if a new version of MacOS comes out with cool new features, you need to wait for a yabai update before you can update your OS otherwise you end up breaking your config.
Right now I also have a bug that means that I can't grant Yabai accessibility permissions so I just have it disabled while I wait for a fix.
All in all, you're running a window manager on top of a window manager, so you're obviously going to end up with some weird behavior. Personally, I've put in several months of effort to making these 2 window managers play nice together and also _feel_ more like my linux install with features like remapping keys with karabiner, launching terminal apps with alfred, having a UI that shows your window manager shortcuts, and a panel that queries info from yabai. Is it worth it? If my job depended on it I would probably just use macOS as default, but since this is all on my personal device and I enjoy tinkering, I think it's worth it.
With small screen phones, the screen is usually filled with only one app/mode at a time. I see a lot of the same use on Windows where there is only one maximized app/mode at a time, even though one can tile, stack and overlap multiple windows. Window's Multiple Document Interface (MDI) has somewhat morphed into "Tabs" which still present only one tab/mode at a time. No modes please. I am looking at the screenshots and videos for i3 and see a lot of scrollbars and wasted screen space. I don't see the advantage of i3 over Mac or Windows, or XFCE that I use in Linux. What am I missing? Maybe I'm good with what I've got.
It's easy to come across lots of overly done up i3 setups, often using "i3-gaps" which is a modified (fork, I think) of i3 which introduces gaps between all windows and the screen edge in the name of prettiness. This is common in the /r/UnixPorn community and frankly, I would never use it. Perhaps you're seeing a small subset of potential i3 setups. On scrollbars, I don't feel like I see any more scrollbars than in Mac or Windows. Probably less?
The main benefit I see in i3wm compared to any other window managers in other OSes is actually the use of space, my windows are literally edge to edge. Apps don't have title bars unless you've got your windows stacked, and you can customise exactly how many pixels the title bars are. You can customise the colours of active, hovered and inactive window titles. You can add borders to windows, of any size and colour, you can have none.
I also love the multi desktop feature which I use prolifically. I have 10 desktops named 1-10 but you can call them anything you want (emojis work too, thanks unicode). Certain apps always open in certain windows so I always know where everything is. This is all declared in a config file so it's never a guessing game - it just works. Also, I have 2 monitors and multi-monitor support for window management works a dream.
It's not just the tiling - moving windows around is so easy, I can press $mod+Shift+5 to move a window to desktop 5, or $mod+Shift+Left to move it to the left, or even $mod+Shift+Alt+Left to move it to the left monitor. These are second nature to me now.
Finally... the speed. Wow, switching between desktops, windows, monitors just happens incredibly fast. When I use a Mac or Windows I just can't stand all the animation and slowness. M1 macs included. This is in part helped by the picom compositor, with animation time reduced to being nearly negligible whilst being enough to "look nice".
Probably the same problem
Scroll bars are due to the layout of content within the windows. Unfortunately, I need to use very poorly laid out apps/windows that need to span across the monitors! The design where there is a tree on the left, but one can only select one node/mode at a time, and a usually minuscule amount of content on the right appears within an enormous pane of wasted space just grates on me. There are betters ways to layout content minimally, but like the Zoom feature it is a lot of effort.
Screen real estate
Window snapping edges down to the pixel (0 pixel gap.) Lovely. I can't stand window snapping and turn it off completely. I want title bars. I am not fussy down to the pixel where a window lands when I move or resize it. Since I depend on overlapping windows, I want to see that hidden window between my irregularly spaced gaps between windows.
Keyboard-driven workflow
My workflow is mouse-driven. I prefer only a few well-known short-cut keys as the author described in the article. My left hand hovers over the Command keys, and my right hand is on the mouse. In Terminal, I have Autokey remap all the legacy ctrl keys — I can Copy Ctrl+C and Paste Ctrl+V in the Terminal consistent with other apps I use.
setxkbmap -option "ctrl:swap_lalt_lctl"
config files! I would much prefer if, like decades ago, the system would automatically save and restore window placement.
Workspaces
By "the multi desktop feature" you mean Workspaces. I turn Workspaces off completely.
Speed is relative. I don't have an M1 mac. I still have some working PowerPC Macs and the speed is fine. On the i7 Dell, I turn off animations and compositors.
https://opensource.com/article/18/8/i3-tiling-window-manager
But I'm curious: you're not the only one to shill i3wm: obviously people using it love it.
I'm definitely not good at using it effectively: I usual end up with a stack of about 10 windows in one frame, but turning them to a tab frame would prevent me moving sideways to other frames (I often have them side by side).
Probably I could make a command to do it, or use marks properly.
Also not being able to maximise a window but keep the i3bar showing is super annoying.
[1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai
https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-I...
I use it with SIP enabled and haven't had any pain points.
I'm amazed by how painful I find this.
I can't disable SIP on my work laptop which means I'm forced to "sit through" the macOS animations as I switch between desktops. Feel like I've wasted hours of my life watching desktops fade-in/-out.
"Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?"
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt
I liked i3 when I was a linux user, but since I've switched to Mac I've tried to use tools with UIs and opinionated configuration
The trade-off is that yabai is instead annoyingly configurable, and its set of sane defaults is just okay. The only way I've found to mitigate this is by browsing yabairc/skhdrc files on github. I steal whatever looks good, and I keep it if it works well for me.
For linux systems, I like fine grained configuration. For Mac though- I don't like it. I own so little of my system on a Mac that I don't want to maintain custom tooling, given that I have little control over the systems these tools interact with.
Because macOS uses Control+Option to activate the on-screen magnifying glass, I use Shift+Option+Command, which works well for my hand size.
I haven't found any macOS or third-party programs that use Shift+Option+Command for shortcuts yet, so there haven't been any conflicts.
Once you get your personal shortcuts set up in Apple → System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts, it's really a major productivity boost.
†I think you can use Function now, too, since Preview uses it, but haven't tried it yet.
My current issue is that I can't have my macbook's keyboard use the system control keys while my external uses F keys. Like if I don't have the 'use f keys' option on in prefs, my external F1 and F2 become brightness keys...
It's like expecting a DVORAK keyboard to work when the computer is still in QWERTY mode. There's just more matching overlap between keyboards with function keys vs Apple symbols.
System preferences => Keyboard prefs => Modifier keys
You can just remap caps lock to escape without getting fancy. I used to do the hyperkey stuff but it messes with my muscle memory when I'm not using my computer.
There's something to be said for keeping things as simple and close to default as possible.
* caps + a = !
* caps + s = @
* caps + d = #
* etc
-----
Single tap caps is also an escape key.
Ctrl-k (cut to the end of the current line and save it in a special secret extra clipboard) and ctrl-y to paste
Ctrl-e to go to the end of a line, ctrl-a to go to the beginning.
Ctrl-d to forward-delete, ctrl-t to transpose characters (this rarely saves time but I do it anyway).
You can also use ctrl with b, f, p, and n to go back or forwards one character or to the previous or next line, but I just use the arrow keys.
If, however, you desire more control, you can use Karabiner-Elements [0] and one of the many [1] community made emacs-like configurations to have this behaviour system wide, these also add many many more keybinds (such as C-w to delete last word) to further emacsify your workflow!
1. karabiner-elements.pqrs.org
(FWIW, I just tried this in TextEdit's plaintext mode on Big Sur and it does indeed work - more than likely due to the UNIX heritage, the emacs bindings work here too)
It is well known that Command-L will focus the address bar and select any text that might be there, so overriding it is generally a bad idea if you can avoid it.
The same goes for 3rd parties - my Dad is a recent convert to macOS and is frequently stumped when Control-A doesn't select text in Microsoft Word - I explained this to him, but in the moment he sometimes forgets.
The biggest and best thing about MacOS shortcuts is that they don't stomp over typing ASCII controls.
1. Type a sentence in TextEdit
2. Ctrl-A will go to the beginning of the line
3. Ctrl-E moves the cursor to the end
It's a native app, and will dutifully select all text with Command-A - but the other keys still do something. A paradox, to be sure.
I do blame Microsoft for the confusion I described, but I'm not sure there's a way they can solve it among their Mac customers without doing as you mentioned and making someone else's life difficult.
If a mac app has mapped ctrl+a to select-all, this should not be called "working." It is an abomination and should be purged from the universe hastily and with extreme prejudice before the cancer spreads.
I understand and sympathize with the difficulty of moving between ctrl/cmd as super keys, but there are a hundred shortcuts with the same problem and forcing mac to adopt the poor keyboard choices of windows is not the answer.
The proliferation of many smaller writing apps (iAWriter, Byword, 1Writer, and on and on) on macOS means that many of these people probably could leave Word if they tried or switch to a plaintext app which can give you a styled preview (ahem, BBEdit) and they would be fine. Almost all of the features are there.
It's just the comfort of Word as a known thing and the idea of how people use computers to create text which prevents them from taking that leap of faith.
Fortunately it's not just 3rd party writing apps that behave correctly. Pages, Keynote, even Google Docs all have the correct behavior.
You must have broken a configuration or have some other problem. I'm writing this in safari and can use these bindings in this text box and the address bar right now.
https://github.com/amake/dotfiles/blob/master/prefs/Library/...
Unfortunately, more and more apps try to do something "smart" when you click in a text field, like auto-selecting the entire text (WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT?).
And some apps just don't respect the platform conventions and as a result feel incredibly clunky and annoying to use (Autodesk Fusion 360).
Examples: search results in safari, search results in GitHub.com search.
Sadly, google chrome and apps like docs don't respect this
I tried the method you described and it seems to only bring back the frontmost window DragThing/Front and Center style.[1]
Odd.
A .weblocation might from time to time, but these are fairly infrequent.
The regular OSX workflow seems to be only good for a workflow that includes a single maximised Chrome window with a million tabs open.
My windows currently open: ~50 iTerm2 (with loads of tabs and tmux sessions), 5 TextMate (quite a lot of tabs as well), 6 Safari (ditto), 1 Messages, 1 Mail, 1 Music. Cycling through the 50-odd windows to swap to mail would be insane.
The use case you mention is precisely where application orientation is useless, I am not sure why you bring that up.
In most cases I have several windows open but I want to cycle between 2 or 3. I find Windows-like window switching much better, but I guess your mileage may vary.
Switching between 2 windows works fin with command-tab, because it brings only the window that was in the foreground, not all the application's window. So, for example, when switching repeatedly between the same windows in TextMate and iTerm, a single command-tab always brings the other window to the front. Another of my common use cases is looking for papers in Safari, reading them in a bibliography manager, and writing manuscripts in a TeX editor. Again, everything is as smooth as it could be.
It is actually a bit more cumbersome when you have to switch e.g. between 2 windows in one application and a window in another one. Overall, these drawbacks make much more sense to me than Windows' alt-tab's, and the system fits my workflows much better.
You can also switch between applications by using tab whilst in this mode (though it is not too convenient because there is little feedback about which application os selected).
It’s absolutely wonderful as a window switcher for macOS, second to none in my view.
I had a similar setup first in Karabiner, then in BetterTouchTool for easier configurability. But I needed the system to be smarter about this and allow me to assign keys on a whim, not have to change a config file.
rcmd automatically detects your most used apps from those already running and assigns keys to them.
It uses the Right Command key as the trigger, but it’s completely configurable to any other trigger like the mentioned Control+Shift in the post.
It also allows you to hide/show the app fast (I do that a lot with the kitty terminal) or cycle between apps with the same first letter.
For the Brits among us, or perhaps anyone with a non-US keyboard layout, I recall when I still had my Mac, this wasn't mapped properly. It was the button on the right of the left shift. This was quite strenuous when I had to switch within the same application. I can't remember if I just re-mapped the shortcut or what it was, but I suggest you look into having that mapped to the button right above Tab (below ESC). It makes it a lot easier.
https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
Alt-tab, it makes alt-tab cycle all open windows and shows you previews. So much better.
Are all Intel MacBook Airs affected by this? Only those with baseline processors?
This is nice, as most of the time I'm command tabbing between two windows, so I quickly press it and no window pops up on my screen. If I need to press command-tab more than once, it appears and I'm able to select the window I'd like. Seems like decent UX to me
Which Mac(s) are you experiencing that on, and since which OS version?
Maybe I should RTFM?
But I looked at the manual here[], which led me to system preferences > keyboard > shortcuts, and I do not see this shortcut listed there!
What the heck! How do I learn how to use my computer so that I don't randomly learn things I need from web forums?
[]https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-keyboard-shortc...
Just like cmd-shift-tab, it’ll cycle “backwards”, but with windows I find it useful much more often than apps, since flipping between two windows out of N is pretty common for me.
Combine any of these with the shift key and you can select everything in between.
- ctrl option b, ctrl option f - ctrl a, e, k
Some GUIs and editors respect this, but it varies (Jupiter lab, emacs, GitHub.com text fields, etc)
The main feature I want from a window manager is the ability to save my OSX workspace (applications open and tiled per Desktop, per monitor) and reset it to that state instantly. I haven't found anything that does this yet. Does Karabiner, yabai, or any of the tools mentioned here do this?
I'll spend significant time setting up my window environment just how I want it (grouping chats on Desktop 1, localhost browsers on Desktop 2, terminals on Desktop 3, etc.) Then after unplugging my Macbook, my workspace gets all messed up and I have to re-organize everything! I'm surprised this isn't a more commonly discussed issue.
Every morning I hit Command+Option+W (W for work), which opens Slack, Teams, Email, Dashboards, VPN, and terminals with ssh connections, plus all windows open where I want them automatically. Then when I’m done for the day I hit Command+Option+Shift+W and all my work stuff magically disappears. It’s straightforward to set up with good documentation, but you must architect your own system for automating tasks like this. Hammerspoon can be pretty powerful for MacOS quality of life automation.
The app is not free and I’m the developer.
- Cmd+⬅ or Cmd+ (edit supposed to be a right arrow character here, but it seems HN comment strips it)
- Or the linux shortcuts Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E
I've tried on multiple occassions to remap keys to use as those are favorites in NLE workflows. My brain just has a harder time remapping the keys than the OS.
I basically can't use a Mac in any reasonable capacity without this now
What’s great is the discoverability this affords. And because it shows the native shortcut right there, you can learn that if you want. Or if it’s something you don’t use so often, don’t bother.
Tip: there’s an option to manually force it on for all apps, vs. ‘auto’ mode. Something like that, I’m not on my Mac now. Turn that on.
It's quickly turning into _the_ essential utility on Mac. Hopefully their business model will be acceptable.
capslock + [key] = ctrl + [key]
capslock alone = esc
capslock + space = enter
capslock + wasd = arrow keys
It mostly provides more convenient syntax for what you do in Karabiner, but it also provides new abstractions that it converts into the appropriate rules. "simlayers" for example are keyboard layers entered by pressing the trigger key and quickly pressing a layer key within a short timeout window. I've used this to set shortcuts like w+e to open IntelliJ, w+r to open chrome, s+d to open Alfred's clipboard history, etc.. Caveat being that there's a slight delay on your simlayer trigger keys entering their actual character since the layer timeout must be hit before the default keydown behavior of inserting a character is used. Also it's common to occasionally press a second key before releasing a first key while just typing naturally, so best to avoid using keys that you often roll into others while typing as trigger keys..
It seems to me that it made input lag sometimes worse and also just ate input more often that when I uninstalled it. I mean this piece of shit i9 2019 MBP does that sometimes anyway when under high load, but happens more often with Karabiner installed.
[1]: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/334266/swap-or-rem...
There were some hiccups around the time of 10.12, but the developer resolved all the ones that I saw.
No matter how long I've been using MacOS, it seems there's always something new to learn that will surprise me. Something like 13 years exclusively using Macs for my desktop OS and I've just learned this. Granted I don't speak or write any foreign languages so I wouldn't have much use for diacritics, but it's still cool.
Shortcuts I constantly use:
- Command-Backtick
- Command-Tab (seems obvious, but some people don't work this way...)
- Command-Tab to hidden app icon then press Option before releasing Command to restore a hidden apps windows - https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/55440
- Command+Shift+4 to take screenshots using the built in functionality, or the other similar shortcuts for screenshot-ing a screen, portion of a screen, or a window to the clipboard.
- Shortcuts for sending window to left half / right half of the screen, or switching screens, using Rectangle.
- Command-Opt-\ + TouchID for 1Password deserves a mention for sure.
https://i.imgur.com/LWO3VOG.jpg
I'd like them be be beginning-of-line/end-of-line like they are on Linux and Windows but instead they seem to vary by app
- Control-A: Beginning of line - Control-E: End of line
In addition, there's also Control-N, Next line, Control-P, Previous line. Control F, Next Character and Control B previous Character
The solution I recently started to use is this [1]. Seems ok so far (except iTerm ssh to a FreeBSD server, though I'm not sure maybe it is iTerm's "feature")
1. caps lock --> escape / ctrl
2. right command + h/j/k/l --> arrow keys
3. left/right shift --> left/right parenthesis
On mac, it's a menu in preferences. On windows, I have to download a program. On linux, there are 30 different programs and config files to do it and the linux community seems to be perpetually at war with them, with 25 of them silently or loudly broken at any given moment. The only one that works reliably, setxkbmap, is temporary.
Still worth it!
I got used to this on Mac and was kinda shocked how difficult it was to make it work everywhere on Linux, when I last tried it about 18 months ago. I spent (well, wasted) a lot of time digging through suggestions for how to do it, half of which didn't work and the rest of which only worked some places. On a new Mac it takes maybe 20 seconds to configure, simply using the GUI, and that's it.
Well this explains the odd behaviour of vim keybindings on VSCode on a Mac. I hold `l` to move right and instead I just see a strange pipe-ish character pop up.
- No tap and hold keys - No hyper escape - No latch keys
This all seems pedestrian from a keyboard shortcut guru perspective.
That's why it's on the front page because enough other people thought it was interesting enough to promote. But I think you're smart enough to realize that, and are just grandstanding as a humble-brag "I already know this" kind of thing.
The real question is who are you to think that something not intresting to you shouldn't be interesting to others.
Anyone with a desktop Mac and some kind of programming skill needs Keyboard Maestro. It not only slings windows around but automates many chores. It also lets you get around most user interface annoyances that turn up in every program. My advice is to get it and learn it well if you spend much time on a Mac.
I have an ancient Genovation CP48 ControlPad attached to my keyboard. It has 48 function keys and every one is assigned. Most of the keys do double or triple duty. I positively hate it when I have to use anyone else's Mac for any prolonged period.
You should indeed feel free to share your knowledge; likely someone will find it useful.
I have to use a MacBook for work, but am forbidden from creating or logging into an iCloud account on it, and this is absolutely infuriating.
I found a way to copy all the shortcuts into a file so at least I don't have to retype them every time, but at least six times a day, I have to delete the stupid "omw: on my way!" shortcut and drag my own file back into the window.
Several hours searching for a solution hasn't solved it. This appears to be intentional on Apple's part to force iCloud sign-in.
That means that many of the common shortcuts such as copy paste are on the same physicals buttons regardless of the OS.
Huge quality of life improvement.
On my Mac layout I basically never touch lower-left ctrl, just cmd (which is faster and requires less movement and stretching to strike than ctrl does) and CAPS LOCK, which I've mapped to ctrl. Pressing bottom-left-ctrl makes me rotate my wrist and stretch my pinkie down—I don't have RSI in my left wrist, but I can feel the tension that motion creates. Cmd, I just shift my thumb over an inch or so, no wrist rotation, everything stays more relaxed. CAPS LOCK, pinkie just moves a few mm left, other fingers can stay where they are unless needed for something else.
I soon discovered AutoHotkey and the Emacs configuration by John Cooper. It is pretty awesome. I have more consistency than I had on Mac. I also have emacs(like) bindings on Excel, Davinci Resolve, Chrome, and more.
Lest you think I'm weird for liking emacs, I also use an ErgoDox keyboard, so I probably am.
Has anyone else used CE, or other clipboard managers?
Regardless, I'd review it if I were writing that post today. Note, though, that the mobile app is $9/yr. Cross-device sync was one of my personal requirements, so Copy 'Em would only be $1/yr cheaper than Paste.
I also loved Copied because of it's sync and great iOS version but it's unsupported so wouldn't really recommend it.
defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool yesYou might get more responses if you tell people what behavior you expect from Alt+Click/drag.
If you're trying to copy something (often a file, but many other things), you can Option+Click+drag. If you want to click on something, then drag it after releasing the click, that's available in the Accessibility settings.
The behavior of Alt+Click/drag is to allow you to click on any part of a window and move the window. It is extremely useful not just from time-savings (no need to click on the top bar to reposition a window), but also to be able to grab windows that are positioned off-screen or beneath another window and move it with a single operation.
Press spacebar to capture the window
mod + 2: toggle Terminal
That’s the most useful I have.
Key repeating is important, I set it to the slowest delay possible. Hate that thing.
I'll take ugly and smart over the reverse any day.
I remember clerks looking proficient clicking away behind the desk in the 90's compared to the extremely slow use of touchscreens these days.