10 Alternatives To Your Favorite Mac Shortcuts

Sometimes widely-used Mac tips and tricks aren't actually the fastest or easiest was to do something. Learn some alternatives to using Spotlight, the app switcher, the Emoji viewer and more.
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some alternatives to your favorite Mac Shortcuts. 
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We all have our ways of getting around in macOS. We use different keyboard shortcuts. Sometimes gestures, sometimes clicking in different places to get things done really quickly. Some of the most popular ones though have alternatives that may actually be faster or some people may like them better. 
For instance, the first one is for launching apps. A lot of people talk about using Spotlight to launch apps. I even bring it up as a great way to do it. You use Command Space that brings up Spotlight Search. You start typing the name of an app and then when it is the one selected press Return and it launches the app. Much easier than going to the Applications Folder. It's better than going to the Dock because you can use the keyboard instead. But is it the best way to do it? There's also Launchpad. Now Launchpad you would normally get to by clicking on Launchpad in the Dock. At that point you're already slower than using Spotlight. But, you can bring up Launchpad with a Keyboard Shortcut as well. Now some Mac keyboards actually have it as a key. I've got it here are F4 and it brings up Launchpad. Then all I need to do is start typing just like if I had brought up Spotlight. But the advantage is that I'm only seeing Apps. Spotlight is slowed down by the fact that it is looking for files, it's giving you suggestions for web searches and all of that. Launchpad is just focused on Apps. So, it is really easy to narrow it down to just one, press Return, and it launches. In my test Launchpad was always a little bit faster as long as you can get to it by Keyboard Shortcut. If you go into System Settings and then you go to Keyboard. Then if you look under Keyboard Shortcuts the first thing you want to look for is under Launchpad & Dock. You want to assign a Keyboard shortcut to show Launchpad. So something good might by Shift Command Space. So it is similar to Spotlight but not the same thing. Know that if you're going to use F4 to do it, if you see that on your keyboard, you may need to use the fn or Globe key at the same time. But if you turn this setting Off under Function Keys then you can just press F4. So now F4 brings it up.
Now next we've got the App Switcher. You've got a bunch of different apps running. Use Command and then Tab while continuing to hold down the Command Key to switch to another app. That app then comes to the front. That works great. I don't know if you can beat that. But the Dock will contain all of the apps that you're currently using. You've got all the apps that you want here on the left and any that you have launched but aren't on the left are going to appear on the right. So every app you're using is going to be here. You can easily move the pointer down to the bottom and then click an app to bring that one to the front. If your hands are on the trackpad already then using the Dock may be faster that using the App Switcher. If you want to use the keyboard you can do it with the Dock. Just use fn or the Globe key and then A. That will bring up the Dock and notice how the first item selected there on the left. I can use the Arrow Keys to move over. I can select the App I want and press Spacebar and it jumps to it. So it if very similar to using the App Switcher except that the items are always going to remain in the same order on the Dock. So some people may actually like it better. 
Another option for switching apps is to simply use Mission Control. If you've just got one Desktop space open then Control Up Arrow brings up all of the windows there and you can click on the window that you want to bring it to the front. This is especially useful if you've got multiple windows open for the same app. So, for instance in Pages here, I'll open up another window and now I can easily pick between these two windows here instead of using the App Switcher first and then having to choose the right window. 
Now if you do want to switch between windows a quick way to do it is Command and then the backtick key which on US Keyboards is above Tab. Use the and you can switch between the windows in the current app. But App Expose will do this for you too. Control Down Arrow and now you can see the two windows. Now you can click on the one you want. In fact if you use App Expose with Control and Down arrow you can then Tab without holding any modifier keys down through all of your apps. Then you can use the Up Arrow and go to windows and then Return to jump to the window.  
You can also use the Dock to select a window. So if I go down and find the app in the Dock, click and hold there, I'll see the Open Windows Here and I'll see recent windows as well so I can reopen a recent file. Of course in the app itself the Window Menu is always going to have all the open windows so you can just select one to bring that to the front. 
Now you may also use Spotlight or Command Space to search for files. Type the name of a file and it will search for you and find that file and you can jump to it. It takes a little while because there is a lot of stuff that Spotlight does. Eventually it comes up and you can go and select the document. But if you know you're going to search for a file instead of using Command Space use Command Option Space. This brings up a New Finder Window and the cursor is already blinking there in the search field. Now you can search for a file and it's going to be a little faster because it's only searching for files. You can easily search between file names or All Content,. 
Now if you want to make an app Full Screen you may click the green button here and then it enters Full Screen Mode. But then it is separate from the rest of your windows. In Mission Control it looks like this. You have your regular Desktop and then you have a separate space here just for this one app. One thing you may want to consider is to expand the window to the full size that it can go. So drag the corners out. There's a shortcut for this though. Double clicking on a corner will move that corner all the way to the matching corner on your screen. If you Option Double Click then it will move this corner and the opposite corner as well basically expanding the window to the maximum amount of size that is there. It is still a window and you can still have other windows behind it and bring other windows in front of it. So in some cases this is more desirable than actually making it a full screen space. 
Now keyboard shortcuts and gestures are great but there is an alternative to them called Hot Corners for some commands. If you go into System Settings and then you go to Desktop & Dock and scroll all the way to the bottom there is a button here called Hot Corners. You can setup a Hot Corner for each of the four corners of your screen and set it to one of these shortcuts. So it can launch Mission Control, Launchpad, bring up a quick note, start the Screensaver, lots of different things. If it is in this List you can select it and then when you move your pointer to that corner you can see it activates that just like a Keyboard Shortcut. You can also hold down a modifier key when selecting one of these to make it so that you need to use the modifier key at the same time as you put the pointer in the corner. 
Now if you want to type an emoji character you're probably know how to do that. You can use the keyboard shortcut, Control Command Space, or you can use the fn key and E and it brings up the Emoji & Special Character viewer. You can then search for the character you want and then double click it and it will put it there. There is a lot of steps involved. If you find that there is some emoji characters you use a lot though you can setup a shortcut for that by going into System Settings, go into Keyboard again, and then click Text Replacements. Then let's add a replacement. So you want to use as the first part something you would not normally type like maybe use an exclamation point before the word. Then put a word like that. Then put the replacement as the emoji character that you want to use. Then Add it. Now whenever you want to type that character all you need to do it type this text replacement that you've made and then a Return or Space will replace that with that character. Set it up for your most commonly used emoji and you don't have to search for them anymore. 
Now when you have an app on the screen like this and you want to get it out of the way you may just hit the Minimize button or the keyboard shortcut for that. That will bring it into the Dock. But it doesn't get rid of any other windows that that app has been using. Then getting that window back can be a pain. You've got to go and select it in the Dock and all of that. At lot of times what people really want to do is just Hide the entire app. You can find that in the App's menu here and it is just called Hide or Command H. So just a quick Command H hides the app in all the windows. To get it back you can just use the App Switcher or select it in the Dock or you use any method for launching an app. What it will actually do if it is just hidden it will unhide it. 
The way we do a lot of different things is to either use Keyboard Shortcuts or the Menu up here. For instance if I wanted to copy some text I could select the text and then go up here to Edit and then select Copy or move my hands from the trackpad or mouse that I was just using because I used it to select the text and then do Command C. But a lot of times you can just use the Context Menu for a thing that directly effect an element on the screen. So after this selection here I can either Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad or a right click on a mouse to bring up the Context Menu. I'll find menu commands that would normally be in the menu here and have keyboard shortcuts. But they are available to me right here in the Context Menu. So I can select Copy and I can go to some other place where I want to paste it and then Control Click and then select Paste. Clearly In a lot of cases Command C and Command V are more convenient and at other times maybe go into the Menu. But sometimes the Context Menu will get you there faster especially if you can't remember the keyboard shortcut for something. 
Now I should note that a lot of the things I've shown you here can be done with gestures on a trackpad and sometimes a mouse. So for a trackpad you can go to System Settings, Trackpad, and under More Gestures you can see there are gestures for Mission Control and you can actually customize that, App Expose and you can select some options there and Launchpad as well. So I hope you found this useful or at least it helps you remember that on a Mac there is usually more than one way to do anything. Thanks for watching.
Comments: One Response to “10 Alternatives To Your Favorite Mac Shortcuts”

Mark Hunt
4 months ago
Gary, such a great video, I wish I'd known the window sizing shortcuts so long ago. I kept trying key combos with the green button never realizing double-clicking the edges or corners was what I needed. How did I miss it? Found it buried in Help under "Manage windows on Mac". Instead I've used an app called Spectacle with preset key combos to move and size windows, particularly Calendar event windows which inevitably open their windows offscreen (3 monitors) which cannot be clicked and dragged.
10 Alternatives To Your Favorite Mac Shortcuts

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