Mac keyboard shortcuts | Hacker News Reader

Mac keyboard shortcuts

mattgemmell.com

217 pointsingve121 comments

I live by keyboard shortcuts, and one that I use many times a day that I find lists of OS X shortcuts always miss is how to restore a window if it's minimized, or open a new empty document if no windows are active.

Normally, when you cycle open apps with Command+Tab, if you land on an application that has minimized windows, nothing happens. The way to remedy that is as follows: Hold Command and tab to the app you want to un-minimize. Without letting go of Command, press down Option, then while holding down Option, let go of Command.

It's a little awkward to use at first, then you'll do it automatically. I hold Command with my thumb, then tab with ring finger, then just move ring finger back down to Option, and let go of thumb.

Edit: Bonus tip: When landing on an application icon with Tab, continue holding Command and use Tilde (~) to cycle through windows of the same App. I use that one a lot too.

This was one of the things that made OSX horrible for me when switching from Windows and Linux. I have since learned the tricks to get around many of OSX's windowing quirks, but I do wonder how things like this have not been fixed.

I love my OSX setup now, but if I was a "non-power-user", I think it would be completely unusable. Watching a typical Windows user try to maximize a window in OSX is pure pain.

Hit the + button: window gets a bit bigger, but not full screen.

Drag the window to the top: nothing happens.

Try to get to the edge of the window, and drag it out: RSI inducing frustration.

Windows seems to dominate as far as basic user usability goes on the windowing front. I would still find it completely unusable without the help of a windowing app like spectacle[1] or slate[2].

[1] http://spectacleapp.com/

[2] https://github.com/jigish/slate

I used to be really frustrated by the inconsistent + button, but recently I realized something interesting: especially for text-heavy applications such as browsers, you often don't want to maximize them to the full width of the screen. This is because the optimal reading width is actually relatively narrow compared to our widescreen monitors, and going past that makes documents frustrating to read. As a result, whenever I hit + and the application expands to the full width of the screen, I very often have to grab an edge and drag it back to the center a little bit. There's definitely some things Apple got right with the design.

Additionally, I think the need for maximization and edge-snapping in Windows is something that OSX handles very elegantly with Spaces.

> you often don't want to maximize...

No, I always want to maximize when I want to maximize. When I want to make text more readable, I have other options like zooming, snapping to an edge (in Windows or with an add-on to OS X) or using an application specific function such as "reading mode" or "print layout" (in Word).

Apple got window management completely wrong in my opinion. I mean, here's an example of a situation where an open window is orphaned from keyboard access of any kind:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/128720/how-to-switc...

10 years later, and what I would consider a "power user", and I still spend time every day trying to maximize windows on OS X. It's usually a game of hitting the "+" button to see what will happen, and usually being disappointed by the results.

Does anybody know how to maximize a window with OS X?

Check out Optimal Layout[0]. It's a wonderful cross between a tiling window manager and the normal GUI and something I wish every computer had.

You can bind a single keyboard shortcut to cycle through different possible positions for a single window size. For example, let's say you want a window to take up half the screen. In my case I press F2 once or twice depending if it's on the left or right half.

Another tool to script the GUI is Keyboard Maestro[1]. Almost any GUI action is possible such as closing a specific application on open or moving mouse to x,y. In my case, I set up a keyboard shortcut to activate iTerm (a almost terminal.app) and enter %run<up arrow><enter> to run a python script.

Both cost money but I couldn't live without it after the free trial ended.

[0, 1]:(I'm on mobile otherwise I would post a link; use google).

[0]: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/

Agreed. Optimal layout is great, I can't recommend it highly enough. Watching the video on the site gives you a good idea of all the things you can do with it. Also the developer is very responsive to support questions and feature requests.

I use Spectacle. Full screen is Command-Alt-F. you can also make the window take up a half, third, or quarter of a screen with 1 shortcut. It takes some getting used to, but I find it hard to go without it.

http://spectacleapp.com/

I tried EVERY OS X window management app, spectacle was the one I settled on. I don't remember if I changed my short-cut keys to match Windows arrow snap or not. But OS X window management, especially on multiple monitors was one of the biggest pains when I switched from Win to OS X. At least multi-monitor support by default on OS X is better now days, but they could use some default window management tool improvements.

Here's another vote for Spectacle; shortcuts/key bindings are configurable and the ability to segment your available screen into grids is something I can't live without anymore.

I use Spectacle with alt+cmd+up mapped to 100% window, which I tend to prefer to actual "fullscreen" (OSX is weird with fullscreen on multiple monitors).

Do mention that this is a FREE app, which just works! The most of the other suggested apps here are paid.

BetterTouchTool lets you snap windows at the top to maximize. http://www.bettertouchtool.net/

The author mention a great little app in his previous blog post called Moom [1] I just tried and it's awesome! You can resize, full screen, put windows left and right immediately without the mouse.

[1]: http://manytricks.com/moom/

+1 for moom;

I have cmd+period set to activate moom, then just period (when moom is activated) set to maximize.

I use that key sequence dozens of times a day (I also have many others, and custom layouts, configured.. but that alone makes it worthwhile.)

Like most things with OS X, the built-in tools and behaviors are horrible and broken and is fixed by installing any one of a few dozen community built fixes (there seems to be a category of roughly equivalent utilities like this for virtually every single piece of the OS).

Apple simply refuses to fix this basic stuff and I avoid interacting with the GUI bits of OS X as much as possible. At least you can finally resize windows from more than just the bottom right corner, that's a win I guess.

Yes - Hold shift when clicking the maximize button.

https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ works well, but costs money.

Well, classically at least, the + button should enlarge the window to the largest size that fits the content... Hence no Windows-style maximize feature.

I use Moom for window stuff: http://manytricks.com/moom/

The maximize button is always dragged out in discussions of OS X usability.

But you only need it if you're constantly resizing windows--which is not something most people do. Most people just set the window size they want once, because OS X remembers it per app.

Or, if the user wants the app full screen, they use the "full screen" button.

I think Slate has been abandoned. Check out Phoenix: https://github.com/sdegutis/phoenix

This is a good tip but it comes too late. To deal with this exact frustration I decided years back to simply never minimize anything ever. It's working well for me.

I just use Cmd+H to hide windows instead of minimizing, since hiding effectively does exactly what I want (get the window out of my sight, but leave the app running) and then I can easily Cmd+Tab back to it.

I only recently found a good use for minimizing over hiding: I was working in my IDE (PhpStorm) on several projects (each project opens in its own window) and I wanted to switch back and forth between two project windows. With 4 or 5 windows open, switching between the two windows I was interested in (using Cmd+`) was a game of cat and mouse. I was alway hoping that I'd land on the right window and not mess up the order of windows. Then I realized if I just minimize the windows I don't need right now, I can get them out of the Cmd+` cycle and easily switch between on the two windows I want.

I hide everything too, but I wonder if there is a quick way to hide everything but the current active windows.

CMD-OPTION-H should do that.

I also recall there being an option you can turn on through the Terminal that has the same effect when you click on an application's icon in the Dock.

I solved that same use-case by buying another monitor... I'm not even joking, either.

If you've ever attempted to be productive while at a meeting, traveling or at a customer site these tricks become very useful.

I knew about it pretty much from the beginning, but I still never minimize anything since it's a pain to have to remember which windows I minimized and therefor need to also press Option for.

Of course more often then not I'll use Alfred, which does open minimized windows by default.

This is a game changer, how did you even discover it?

I don't really remember to be honest, I'm always on the prowl for new shortcuts (I rarely touch the mouse. Also, get Vimium for Chrome.) but it changed how I interact with OS X pretty significantly after I found it.

It is nice, but I sometimes wish that Safari or Chrome tabs would cycle with that combination, rather than the control + tab sequence as then it would all be a bit more similar.

FYI: You can also cycle tabs with Command+Option+Left and Command+Option+Right and Command+[1, 2, 3, etc, with 9 always selecting the right-most tab] in the case of Chrome.

With Safari, you can do Command+Shift+[ and ]

Command shift [ ] works with almost everything that has tabs including safari, chrome, terminal, Xcode and sublime. (those are the ones I use it with).

Good to know.

What I do is Command+Tab then Down Arrow. This will allow you to use the left and right arrows to cycle through all windows.

Because of this awkwardness, I never minimize windows either (like others who replied here). I simply hide them.

I do this either. This way, if you CMD+TAB to it, it will get revealed.

It seems to work for me even without letting go of Command, I just need to tap Option while Command is being held down and it will pop the window back out.

Huh. Cool.

Depending on your keyboard you might also be able to slide (with your thumb) from Command to Option. It’s certainly possible on Apple’s keyboards (I just tried).

This is incredibly helpful - thank you.

but you need to know apriori that it is minimised no?

Made my day...

I find the philosophy behind keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS vs Windows interesting; the former appears to be designed with a much heavier emphasis on mouse use, with keyboard shortcuts added later, while the latter feels somewhat more balanced and the shortcuts easier to discover. E.g. menubars can be navigated in Windows via Alt, the arrow keys, and Enter, with the underlined items also accessible by pressing the corresponding key; in Mac OS the corresponding shortcut is Ctrl+F2, is only available after enabling it with Ctrl+F1. and there's no underlined letters to guide you. Things like moving/resizing windows can be accomplished pretty easily with the keyboard in Windows (Alt- -M/Alt- -S), there's no equivalent by default on a Mac.

I feel the same way. When I moved from Windows to Mac, I nearly burst into tears due to lack of simple keyboard shortcuts. And it was surprising to me given how geeks prefer Mac over Windows. I expected Mac to be more keyboard friendly and was disappointed.

OSX doesn't have a lot of shortcuts for working with the GUI like Windows does. On the other hand, OSX has some fantastic and consistent shortcuts for actually working with data. (For example, Cmd-G, Cmd-Shift-G, Cmd-E, and Cmd-J for text search.) OSX is also incredibly powerful in that it allows you to assign shortcuts to Services, which in turn can be created using simple Automator workflows. This opens up so many possibilities system-wide. Finally, and most importantly, OSX adheres to the same sort of natural language philosophy that we're so used to with Google: if I want to find a specific menu action, why would I navigate the menu graphically when I can just type in the name? Cmd-Space and Cmd-? are the shortcuts I miss most of all whenever I switch back to Windows.

Thank you for pointing out cmd+?, I had no idea it would search through menu items. That will relieve the frustrations that I have with OSX menus a little.

Could you provide an example of what you use services and Automator for? I've seen the services menu and I think I read somewhere that it works with the clipboard, but I have no idea what I can use it for.

I think the one I use most of all is "New Terminal At Folder", since it means I don't have to type in my current Finder directory in cd.

Here's another example. I recently wrote an Automator Service to copy selected file/folder paths to my clipboard. Super useful for programming and it only took me half an hour without knowing any AppleScript. http://cl.ly/1a3s3g1u2Q2w

By the way, the contents of the Services menu changes depending on the type of data you've selected. If you want to see a full list, go to System Preferences — Keyboard — Shortcuts — Services. Lots of stuff to choose from!

Just wanted to throw out a mouse alternative: you can drag any folder into the terminal and get the path and then you go back to the head of line and cd into it

I have a suspicion that 90% of platform/editor/etc nerd-rage is really motivated by occasionally being 'forced' to use one that you don't know the keyboard shortcuts for.

I'd say it's even more than that usually: you're forced to use a paradigm that you're not familiar with.

For example, while I do have a desire occasionally to full-screen a window (for which I currently use Divvy), I usually don't see a need to, because I picked up on the multi-window paradigm where it's quite convenient to be able to see parts of other windows (for drag and drop, for example).

When I first switched to OSX though, I hated the inability to full-screen.

Not the best example perhaps, as I do find it a bit lacking to not natively be able to do so, but my point is that rage is often a result of trying to cram one paradigm into another.

I understand this, but I feel the opposite. I'm a heavy user of both platforms and find the lack of depth in Windows shortcuts maddening. On a Mac, almost every individual operation can be accomplished with a direct shortcut while on Windows, you are often invoking a menu and navigating to the option you want.

I think Mac shortcuts take longer to memorise as they are often a combination of command, shift, option, etc. (although they are helpfully spelled out in each menu) but once you have learned them there is little that can't be done directly from the keyboard with a single invocation.

Cmd-? is so much better than arrow keys. It’s like having M-x everywhere. You can also use that instead of Ctrl-F2.

It's different and great especially for actions that you don't use too frequently, but I still miss the Windows menus. I have a lot of "secondary" hotkeys memorized this way. In Photoshop for instance, there is no hotkey for crop but on Windows, pressing "alt+i, p" activates it which is very close to the same thing.

I work in web browsers a lot and the greatest thing I've ever done for productivity is use the Vimium extension in Chrome, which allows me to easily navigate the web using my keyboard.

Pressing "f" instantly tags each link on the page with one or two letters that I can type on the keyboard to go to that link (if I type them as capital letters, the link gets open in a new background tab, otherwise just a new tab).

Even if you're not a fan of the vim editor, if you enjoy keeping your hands on the keyboard it's worth learning the few keyboard shortcuts that Vimium provides for navigating the web.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...

You might also be interested in Gleebox. I use it a lot.

Well how many of you felt frustrated when not being able to use Cmd+x / Cmd+v for moving files/directories in finder and have to take a recourse to mouse, open the source and destination finder windows and drag files manually?

I recently discovered this gem that accomplishes the feat using keyboard shortcut. Use Cmd+c to place the file(s)/directorie(s) on clipboard. Now move to destination directory and use "Cmd+v" to do copy-paste and use "Cmd+Option+v" to move the selected files and folders.

Another bugbear for me, coming from Windows, was no single-key shortcut to open / delete a file, two of the most common operations. All these little reasons mean I almost never navigate the Finder using the keyboard, which is a real pain (from memory, Explorer is actually very keyboard-friendly).

Yep! I was gobsmacked when I found out. Unfortunately, it's a little bit inconsistent at times, especially when moving files between different media.

Can you please describe the exact steps where the behaviour was inconsistent. We can always file a radar.

Highly relevant if you're interested in learning these, or are bad about remember all the random keys in disparate apps is CheatSheet: http://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/

Pop up that shows available keyboard shorcuts (activated by a keyboard shortcut of course :)

I tried that out a month or two ago, and liked it but quickly removed it. At the time it was popping up its sheet when you invoked the command-tab switcher, which was really annoying.

They seem to have fixed it since then.

There are some other symbols which are (somewhat) common in OS X's shortcut listings but which aren't listed on this page, like Escape, Home, End, Delete... Found them listed here: http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html

That page is missing some symbols, too, and the symbols there are images, not Unicode characters. Here is a full list of Mac key symbols I compiled:

⌘ command; cmd

⇧ shift

⇪ caps lock

⌥ option; alt

⌃ control; ctrl

↩ return

⌅ enter

⌫ delete

⌦ forward-delete

⇥ tab

␣ space

⏏ eject

↑ up arrow

→ right arrow

↓ down arrow

← left arrow

⇞ page up

⇟ page down

↖︎ home

↘︎ end

⎋ escape

A character I missed:

⌧ clear

Also, 9 of the 22 symbols above are conveniently available in the Technical Symbols category in Character Viewer. You have to enable the Technical Symbols category first by choosing “Customize List…” from the gear menu at the top left. Character Viewer supported categories starting in OS X 10.7.

Wow, don't think I've ever noticed that button...

If there was one basic skill that is critical for all novices in moving from novice to intermediate, it'd be keyboard shortcuts...a mechanical skill that's seemingly banal yet important to day-to-day development as typing is to modern writing...and it's even more easily overlooked because most aspiring programmers know how to type at a decent rate, and expect that that's all that's needed to become a decently productive programmer.

Doing power-scripting may not require a ton of keyboard-skill...but for novices trying to leapfrog into web-app development (let's not debate whether that's even wise)...it's excruciating to tell them "OK, now look in config.rb and see if that matches what you see in the main_controller.rb. Then switch to Chrome, refresh, and see the output"...and watch them take 5-10 seconds to poke through each open tab in Sublime Text (or just as bad, explore each branch of the project tree)...by which time, they've forgotten what they were supposed to be looking for in the first place.

In other words, if aspiring developers want to take the quick shortcut, past basic computer science and operating system theory, right into web app development, then they must make up for it in other areas of efficiency. Learning keyboard shortcuts isn't the only vital skill, but it's the easiest to master...and the easiest to pooh-pooh.

Not only that, but apparently mouse movements contribute more toward RSI and carpal tunnel than using a keyboard so it has health benefits too (according to an ergonomics coach I spoke to years ago, this may be disputed by research, for all I know, but it seems reasonable to me)

OS X is emacs-friendly, for example C-A, C-E works as home and end respectively.

I wondered if anyone would mention this. I love those features, and without having a separate meta-key for GUI commands, Apple wouldn't have been able to do it. It's something I really appreciate when running Terminal.app as well; cmd does stuff with the GUI, and ctrl does what you'd expect in the terminal. There are no additional modifiers or quirks to deal with like there tend to be in Windows and Linux.

This is actually one of the biggest reasons I am still in Mac OS. Are there any *nix builds or distributions that have this separation out of the box? I.e.: C-b, C-a, etc (emacs commands) including C-v for scroll (and not system paste) and S-c for copy, S-v for paste (where S is super key or win logo or something similar).

But home and end don't as home and end!

Better Touch Tool (http://www.bettertouchtool.net) is another great free app that can really up your productivity. The biggest features for me are additional multitouch gestures that you can program any way you like. My favorites are three finger swipes up, left, and right to reposition windows a la Windows-Key Up Left Right.

While it isn't strictly a keyboard app, it also gives you a lot of flexibility and does support the keyboard. My latest addition is a script that pulls up the Lastpass extension from a global hot key and puts the mouse over "Copy Password." It is very useful for getting passwords into the command line.

You might want to switch to a real window manager. I use Spectacle, but I think ShiftIt is much more popular.

http://spectacleapp.com/

https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt

One that doesn't seem to be mentioned: if you want to navigate to an absolute path using the keyboard from within a Finder window or a Save dialog, use ⌘⇧G to open a little "Go to..." panel that lets you type in a path. It has path completion and has tilde expansion.

Correction: it has really badly implemented path completion, at least in 10.6.8 (yeah, I know ...) For instance, "/hom⇥" gives "/home/" but "/home⇥" takes the focus to the cancel button. I suppose it's a tricky one to get right, given that ⇥ is being overloaded here, but it's a pretty horrible experience as it is.

Yeah, and it's the simplest way to go to hidden directories.

Unfortunately ^F2 doesn't seem to consistently work in my experience, so I have unmapped it and use a Keyboard Maestro macro triggered by same keystroke globally...

1. Save mouse position 2. Mouse mouse to 0,0 3. Click left button. 4. Restore mouse position.

It's a hack but it works.

I also wish there was a consistent keystroke for focusing to the top-level element of a page in Safari: when browsing using Chrome I frequently use the excellent Vimium extension (Vim shortcuts in Chrome; plus great highlighting of links to pretty much navigate quickly with keyboard only). In Safari I use the similar, but not quite as good Vimari. However I find that after navigating to a page from the URL bar, the shortcut to trigger Vimari doesn't ALWAYS work until I click on the document somewhere...

⌃F2 only works after you have hit ⌃F1 once to “Turn keyboard access on or off”. If you hit ⌃F1 again, it will stop working. It’s probably not working for you because you hit ⌃F1 sometimes. You might be hitting it accidentally or because you use it to do something else – I use ⌃F1 to start recording a Quick Macro in Keyboard Maestro.

Hmmm, maybe, I'll disable my macro and give the original shortcut another go. Perhaps I can disable the shortcut for Turn keyboard access on or off!

Screenshot shortcuts are my favorite:

Cmd+Shift+3 = Capture the entire screen

Cmd+Shift+4 = Capture a selection with the mouse

Cmd+Shift+4 -> Space Bar -> Move cursor and click on window = Capture the selected window

By default it will save these to an image on the desktop. By holding down the Control key it will copy it to the clipboard.

Dropbox can actually hook into these and save screenshots into your Dropbox folder, copying a sharable link instead of the image content itself. It's brilliant when you want to quickly share a screengrab with a collaborator.

Wow that sounds great, is this the product you are referring to: http://grabbox.devsoft.no/?

At least on OS X, it's been built in to the Dropbox client for at least a few months now, no need for a third party product. Activate it in the Imports tab of Dropbox's Preferences.

I love my Mac, I really do, but damn why is Mail such a POS? Really do I need a three key combo to mark a message read? Why can't I have my smart mailbox mark its messages read? Let alone Mail went through all those trials and tribulations where it really didn't want to think you read your mail.

Still there are still other quirks that can be irritating, as others have mentioned window controls and my favorite, accidentally finding a three key combo that puts things off the main window or worse changes the zoom and you have to figure it out the hard way (yeah, have had Macs for over ten years now and there are key combos that elude me still)

Agree completely. You may want to checkout Airmail. Nice looking client with all of the GMail keyboard shortcuts enabled.

Plays relatively nicely with Exchange too.

Had to spend two bucks yesterday to find out that Airmail doesn't support the new Gmail folders (Primary etc). Back to Web client.

My FAV key combo is simple: FN + Backspace

Since I use the terminal ALOT, this key combo is the same behavior as delete on a full keyboard. It will delete text in front of the cursor.

Another helpful one I found out through trial and error is Fn + Shift + <- OR ->

The above moves the cursors placement to the beginning or end of a terminal prompt. Hope this helps someone else :)

You will see the same behavior with the emacs shortcut Ctrl-D on most system text areas, as well as in the terminal. I even added it as a Vim mapping in my config.

While we're here:

  ^A - Home (beginning of line, A is the first letter of the alphabet)
  ^D - Delete (the character to the right of the cursor, or the one underneath the block cursor)
  ^E - End (end of line, E for End)
  ^T - Transpose (switch the characters left and right of the cursor, for example "acbd" with the cursor between "c" and "b" would become "abcd")

Fn + arrow keys = PgUp, PgDown, Home, End.

Good stuff. Most importantly, it highlights Cmd+Spacebar. It's amazing how many of the non-hard-core geeks know about Cmd+Spacebar on Mac.

Someone told me an investment firm took AWAY computer mice from all employees because using just keyboard makes you 20% more productive (I think they were all Windows shop). And I believe the 20% figure.

Great list. I'd also like to suggest this small plugin which allows you to rearrange your windows on your screen as you would in Windows 7/8 with the snap to feature: http://most-advantageous.com/window-keys/

I love how my 3 year old macbook pro has "alt" and "option" labels on that key that in shortcuts is some awesome unrelated glyph, and the key labeled "control" is in shortcuts described as "^" (which at least is familiar from TTY)

The "shortcat" application recomended seems pretty awesome. Playing around with it now.

Thanks for pointing it out -- my eyes had slid past that portion of the article. Shortcat is really impressive! I'm not sure whether I'll use it enough to get into a muscle memory with it, but off the bat it makes navigating web pages and controlling iTunes much easier.

http://shortcatapp.com

My one gripe is they took away Dictionary definitions as first results from Spotlight (command+space). I'll look into using the Dictionary shortcut mentioned in by the OP but I often used the Spotlight way for words I wasn't looking at on my screen.

You can press Cmd + L to skip down to the definition, or Cmd + D to open the dictionary to the current word.

SizeUp is a great utility that gives you keyboard shortcuts for resizing and moving windows around. Essential!

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

A bit shallow.

For me the main problem was that Macs had a completely different shortcut layout than Windows and Linux. With 'KeyRemap4MacBook' I was able to get consistency across the different platforms (not perfect but ~ok).

Why downvote?

(There are many pictures in the article and it is written with much detail, granted. But KeyRemap4MacBook should have been mentioned imho and the problem if you switch platforms and use platform-specific shortcuts is real, imho of course)

The keyboard layout took some adjusting to. First that Command/Super is used in place of Control for most shortcuts, and second that on a Mac keyboard, Command/Super and Alt are swapped!

The problem is if you switch between Mac and Linux computers (and sometimes Windows): it's highly annoying when the 'shortcut-muscle-memory' has to 'think'...

With KeyRemap4MacBook I could 'linux-standardize' the Mac shortcuts. It's not perfect but good enough and vim, terminal, most ui behave ~equal.

> The problem is if you switch between Mac and Linux computers (and sometimes Windows): it's highly annoying when the 'shortcut-muscle-memory' has to 'think'...

Or you just need to double the amount of shortcuts you know ;)

Command-Shift-G in the save dialog or in a Finder window brings up a "Go to folder" prompt that allows text input of a path _with tab completion_.

As an aside, these posts remind me of macosxhints.com of years past.

Hitting just ~ will also launch that dialog, although the text box only has "~" in it. And cmd-. cancels it. (Works pretty much everywhere that has a "Cancel" menu item.)

Whoa, that has tab completion? I never knew!

You can set up a shortcut for tagging files in Finder which I find really helpful: https://coderwall.com/p/8li8hw

Also: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/system-bindings.html

Most of the basic Emacs navigation bindings work as well

C-a C-e C-b C-f C-p C-n C-d

probably more...

The most glaring issue I have with Mac keyboard shortcuts is the lack of a Meta+L lock feature like in other OSes. "Hot Corners" are idiotic for this purpose.

Ctrl-Shift-Eject (or power for non-optical Macs) locks the screen.

"Opening recent items" doesn't seem to work for me with any app including TextEdit. I just get Exposé

Seriously how can you write a keyboard shortcut tutorial and not include any mention of keyremap4macbook.

useful stuff, but is skipped the easy shortcuts to get accented characters:

option-n then n or N : ñ or Ñ

option-e then a, e, i o or u : á é í ó ú or Á É Í Ó Ú

option-u then a, e, i o or u : ä ë ï ö ü or Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü

option-` then a, e, i o or u : à è ì ò ù or À È Ì Ò Ù

option-c : ç or Ç

there are probably others but I'm more familiar with French, Spanish and German than say Czech.

Since 10.7 or 10.8, you can also keep the key pressed to get an IOS-style special character popover.

never noticed that. the option keystrokes are so ingrained, I'll probably keep using them.

For those who find themselves needing to write pīnyīn, two additions:

option-a then a, e, i, o, or u: ā ē ī ō ū or Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū

option-v then a, e, i, o, or u: ă ě ǐ ǒ ǔ or Ǎ Ě Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ

Why this trend of using large font size on blogs? (1.225em from http://mattgemmell.com/stylesheets/screen.css). This is ridiculous, especially when this is done on mobile too. I have to scroll to be able to even read the first word of the first paragraph on my phone!

My favorite shortcut is:

ctrl-shift-eject

to start the screen saver and lock the screen if screen locking is enabled.

Finder/Help/Search: keyboard shortcuts. Second topic.

Turning CapsLock into a modifier key changed my life.

on osx the shortcuts are different for emacs between the terminal and x forwarded sessions. it kills me inside that this is the best hardware I can afford for now. oh I also had to remap OSX shortcuts to keep from closing my xfowarded emacs session.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com