10 Hidden Things You Can Do With Your Mac Keyboard

In addition to keyboard shortcuts, there are hidden functions you can perform with your Mac keyboard if you know the right combination or setting. You can forward delete, bring up context menus and show hidden menu commands. You can even use the Caps Lock or second set of modifier keys for other things.

Check out 10 Hidden Things You Can Do With Your Mac Keyboard at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at ten hidden functions of your Mac keyboard.
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Now I'm really not going to talk about keyboard shortcuts here which activate commands in the Menu Bar. I'm going to talk about some hidden keyboard combinations that you can use to perform functions on your Mac that you can't just see by looking at the characters on the keys. For instance you've got a Delete key at the upper right hand corner of your keyboard. You can use that to delete the previous character. But if you hold the fn key down and then press Delete it actually will delete the character ahead of the cursor. On Windows this is called Forward Delete. So I can delete characters like that. 
Now if you have an extended keyboard, that's a keyboard with a numeric keypad on the right, you have Page Up and Page Down keys. You can use those to jump forward an entire page or back an entire page. But most of us don't have those especially if you have a MacBook. However you still can do page up and page down. All you need to do is hold the fn key and use the up and down arrows. Page down, page up. Likewise an extended keyboard has a Home and End key that will jump to the end of a document or webpage or back to the beginning. You can do that as well by holding the fn key and using the right and left arrows. 
Now I'm sure you already know that if you hold Control and Command down and press Space it brings up the emoji and special character viewer. Now what if you just wanted to type the Apple logo. There's actually a character for that but if you search for apple you don't come up with it. You find the apple emoji but not the Apple character for some reason. So the hidden keyboard combination for that is Shift Option and then the letter K. That types the Apple character and it's available in almost every font for the Mac. 
Now in Windows you have a right click which brings up a context menu showing you things you can do with whatever is selected. On a Mac you can do it with the mouse with the right click as well or on the trackpad by clicking with two fingers. But there's a way to do it using the keyboard with your mouse or trackpad as well. This is the way I prefer. It's holding down the Control key and then just a regular click with your mouse or trackpad. It brings up the Context Menu anywhere. So here with a word in TextEdit if I Control click on the desktop. If I'm in the Finder I can Control click on a File or even Control click on the Toolbar at the top. Anything that you can bring up a Context Menu with you can use the Control key on your keyboard with a regular click to bring it up. 
Now likewise the Option key will bring out hidden commands in the Menu Bar. So for instance if I click on File here I'll see the regular commands. But if I hold the Option key down I see I get some alternatives. For instance, Duplicate here changes to Save As with the Option key held down. In the Finder if I look in the File menu here and I hold down the Option key I get a whole bunch of different commands. For instance, get info changes to Show Inspector. Close window changes to Close All. Even in the Go menu here a new menu command will appear if I hold down the Option key you could see I have the opportunity to go to my Library folder.
So what if you're in an environment, like in Messages, where if you type a line and press Return it submits the information. So if I type Hello and hit Return you could see it sends the message. So I type the first line and instead of Return I do Option Return and you could see the message isn't sent. Yet I go to another line and now I could do Option Return for more lines or Return to send it. This works in lots of different situations for hitting a Return will send the message or complete the action. Using Option Return will instead add another line. For instance here in Numbers if I type something in a cell and hit Return it goes to the next line. But instead if I hit Option Return you could see I could add a second line.
Now let's assume under System Preferences Keyboard you have use F1, F2, etc keys as standard function keys turned Off. That means when I press the key with volume up or volume down it will actually change the volume. So I could do Volume Up and Volume Down. But there are some hidden functions here. One is if you hold Option and Shift then it does it in small increments. Another is if you just use Shift it will go up in full increments but it will give you a little sound indicator each time. If you hold down the Option key and hit Volume Up or Volume Down it will launch System Preferences and take you right to the Sound Control.
Now what about the Caps Lock key. Have you ever accidentally hit the Caps Lock key and then find out you're shouting in all caps when sending a message or an email. Well, you can disable the Caps Lock key or reassign it to something else. Go into System Preferences and then to Keyboard. Then look for the button that says modifier keys. Select that and you can see the first one is Caps Lock. You can reassign Caps Lock to be another control, Option command, or Escape key. Or simply set it to No Action. So then the Caps Lock key does nothing and you won't make that mistake again. 
Here's another hidden function of your keyboard. If you hold down a key you can use that for accent marks. So for instance I can start typing a word like this and instead of just typing e I hold down e and wait for the alternative to appear at the top. Then I just tap the number of the correct one. So for instance I can tap 2 and I get café with an accent mark. 
Now here's a bonus one and I've saved the best for last. Wouldn't it be nice to use the modifier keys on the other side of the keyboard for something different. For instance I always seem to hit Shift or Command or Option or Control on the left side of the keyboard. Never on the right. So those keys are unused for me. You can actually assign those other keys to something else. You won't find that in System Preferences, Keyboard. Instead look in System Preferences Mission Control. You'll see these shortcuts here for Mission Control. If I look at those I can actually assign Mission Control shortcuts like bringing up Mission Control to one of the two Shift keys, or Control keys, or Option keys, or Command keys. So I can use the unused modifier key for activating Mission Control, going to the Application Windows in Mission Control, or showing the Desktop. 
So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 5 Responses to “10 Hidden Things You Can Do With Your Mac Keyboard”

Neil Smith

1 month ago

Really useful particularly the “show desktop”. I have always minimised all my windows to get to the desktop now I know a better way. Thanks

Steve Koutros

Gary: Many thanks for these hidden keyboard shortcuts…love them. When business picks back up, I will definitely contribute via patreon. Thanks, Steve

GazzaDownUnder

My favourite when on a laptop or “short” keyboard for “forward deleting” is to use the Control key + the D key.
Works the same as Fn+Delete key, but can be done with one hand Ctrl+D.
After using numeric extended keyboards since 1989 … going to a short keyboard had me flummoxed for many months until I discovered Fn+Delete but even more happy with Control+D keys.
++++
Why can’t Apple provide a SEND button for Messages.app on MacOS? It has one for iOS! AppleMail has ⌘+D for Send email.

Howard Brazee

I have a two-year-old MacMost cheat-sheet of keyboard settings taped to the wall next to my desk. Do you have an updated version which includes control-return? Is there a way to type the option or control or command symbols?

Jasper Robinson

3 weeks ago

Wrt Horward—You can assign text, including command characters, in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text.

You could assign ‘.cmd’ to change to ‘⌘’ by pasting that character from a webpage.

10 Hidden Things You Can Do With Your Mac Keyboard

Comments: 5 Responses to “10 Hidden Things You Can Do With Your Mac Keyboard”

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