7 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts To Forget and What To Use Instead

Keyboard shortcuts are handy and save time, but some of the keyboard shortcuts you are using right now may not be the best way to go. Here are some examples of common keyboard shortcuts that have better alternatives in many situations.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at some keyboard shortcuts that you maybe shouldn't be using. 
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So keyboard shortcuts are great. Everybody loves keyboard shortcuts. But it doesn't mean that you should always use them. There are some keyboard shortcuts that have better alternatives that are often overlooked. First let's talk about keyboard shortcuts for Screenshots. To take a screenshot a lot of people will tell you to use shift command 3 or shift command 4. These, indeed, are the keyboard shortcuts that date back many years for taking screenshots. However, there's a better alternative now. Use Shift Command 5. This brings up the full set of screenshot controls here at the bottom. You can switch from Entire Screen, Window, Selection. You can do Screen Recordings. You've got all of the different options right here in a single menu. It's easy to use and you don't have to remember different keyboard shortcuts for different functions. 
Now the other keyboard shortcuts are really useful if you take lots of screenshots. Like many per hour. Then maybe you want a quick shortcut to do exactly what you want. But for most of us, even myself included and I take a lot of screenshots, Shift Command 5 is the way to go because it gives you all the options and it's just one shortcut to remember. 
Next let's look at Launching Apps. Now the common wisdom is to use Spotlight to launch apps. Everybody will tell you that. I've even said that many times in many different videos over the years. Do Command Space and it brings up Spotlight. You search for the app that you want and then it comes up. But notice how there was a tiny bit of delay for the app to come up. That happens sometimes and it can get in the way because if you quickly type those letters and then Return it might not launch the app because you didn't wait long enough. It's a little annoying. I find a better way to launch apps is actually to use Launchpad. Now I know a lot of you are going to say Launchpad is horrible. I hate Launchpad. But what I'm talking about is not using Launchpad in the way you're probably thinking. I'm talking about triggering the keyboard shortcut and then using it in exactly the same way as Spotlight. It doesn't search for other things like Spotlight does. It just focuses on apps. So it's lightning fast. On some keyboards there's even a Spotlight key. For me on my keyboard F4 will bring up Spotlight instantly. Then I could type just like with Spotlight and Return just like with Spotlight. But it always works lightning fast. There's no delay. In the very least it's just as good as using Spotlight but sometimes it's better. 
Now if you don't have a Spotlight shortcut on your keyboard you can set one up yourself. Just go to System Preferences and then Keyboard and then Shortcuts. Then click on Launchpad and Dock here at the top. Activate the Show Launchpad Shortcut and set it to something. Since Command Space brings up Spotlight setting it to something like Control Space kind of makes sense. So now I've got Control Space to bring up Launchpad, type, Return, Launch, no problem.
Now I often hear from people that are using lots of different Desktop Spaces. If I look at Mission Control here I can see I've got my Desktop and I've got three full screen apps. Switching between the apps sometimes takes a few keystrokes because either you launch Mission Control like this and then you click on the space you want or use Control Right Arrow and Left Arrow to go between them. But what if you have 4, 5, 6 different full screen apps. You have to do Control Right Arrow a bunch of times to get to where you want. But what a lot of people overlook is simply using the App Switcher. Just because the app's full screen doesn't mean you can't us the App Switcher. Command Tab and continue to hold the Command key down and then Tab to go to the app you want will show you all your apps whether they're in a Desktop space or full screen. When you select the app it will jump right to that space. It doesn't matter if it's far away like I've got Photos here and Mail here. So if I'm in Photos if I do Command Tab and then I go to Mail it will jump all the way to that space skipping the full screen apps in-between. 
Now another common keyboard shortcut is using Command N for File New Window. This will create a new window like here in the Finder. Command N I've got two Finder windows here. But often we forget that tabs are better than windows in many situations. The keyboard shortcut for that, in many apps, is Command T for new Tab. So if I want to look at two different places in the Finder here or maybe two different documents in an app, two different locations in Safari, I could just choose Command T to open up a new Tab. So you can see I've got two different tabs. I could be looking at different locations in both of those tabs and easily switch between them. Of course Control Tab will be the keyboard shortcut for going between tabs. Just because they are tabs and you can only look at one at a time doesn't mean you can't drag and drop between them. I can drag this file over to this tab. You can see it switches to it and I can drop it in here. 
Now when looking at files in the Finder we often want to Preview what's there. Like I can't really tell from the icon what this image is. But I could use the Spacebar to bring up QuickLook. QuickLook is very handy and something you should definitely know about and use except that a lot of times it gets in the way. Here it's in the way of the other files. They are hidden behind them. If I use the Down Arrow, for instance, I'll go to the next file but I can't really see what is selected. So sometimes QuickLook isn't the best way to go. You can Preview files in the Finder using the Preview Pane which appears to the right. You're probably used to seeing that in the Column View where it appears automatically. But it actually can appear in any View. Here I am in List View. Go to View, Show Preview, or Shift Command P, it will bring up the preview here on the right which is usually plenty big enough to be able to see what I'm dealing with and you can drag the line here to actually change the size. Now it never gets in the way of the file that you have selected. I try to use the Preview area here as much as possible and I find when I do so I rarely need to use QuickLook. 
Next, let's talk about some really old keyboard shortcuts. Like using Command B for Bold. So you may want to select some text and use Command B to Bold and then go and select some other text and use Command B for Bold. It works great except that you probably avoid doing that. Why? What if you bold a hundred things in the book you're working on and decide that you also want to make them a separate color. Now you've got to go and find all one hundred things and change the color of each one individually. Instead, use Character Styles here. There's already one for Emphasis which we can use. Or we could style the first one like we want, like let's use Command B for Bold, but then in addition to that also change the Color and now I'm going to click Character Styles, click + and change this to Bold Blue, like that and now I could easily use that somewhere else by selecting the Character Styles changing to Bold Blue.  Yes, I can set a keyboard shortcut for that. I go into here and then I click there, one of the things I could do is Shortcut. I can set one of the F keys to be the shortcut for this. Now the advantage to this, besides being able to have a keyboard shortcut that does more than just bold, it can change the style in many ways, is you could change the style throughout your document. So I can go to this first one here, let's change the color to something else, and then I could go here and Update. What will happen is it will update the style and since this also used that same character style will update that as well. So you can have this a hundred or a thousand times throughout the document and easily Update it to a different style.
Finally, let's look at the keyboard shortcut that we all use, Command Q for Quit. Now Command Q is perfectly fine to use if that's exactly what you want. But a lot of times people use it and then be surprised to find that when they relaunch the app the windows that they had opened before are open again. The setting for this is in System Preferences. Under General and then there's a setting here for Close Windows When Quitting App. So if you have this checked then when you Quit an app windows will indeed be closed. Instead let yourself Quit apps like Pages while you're right in the middle of things and relaunch them and pickup right where you left off. I love doing that. So instead of using Command Q you have two alternatives. One is under File here you'll see Close, Command W. I use Command W all the time. What Command W does is it closes the current window and thus the documents in that window. It leaves the app running. This is great if you're switching documents. So you want to close one Pages document and open another there's no reason you need to quit Pages right in the middle of doing that. Use Command W to close and then double click on whatever document you want to open. Or use File, Open to get to it.
The other thing you could do is if you notice Quit here has a companion. If you hold down the Option key you'll see it changes to Quit and Close windows. So Option Command Q will quit and close windows. So you can have the best of both worlds without changing things in System Preferences. Command Q to Quit. Then relaunch with all of the old windows. Or Option Command Q to Quit and Close all the windows at the same time. That will reverse if you change things in System Preferences, General. If I check this then I'll notice that Quit say Quit Pages. Option now says Quit and Keep Windows. 
So there are some things that you should think about when using seven common keyboard shortcuts. They are not always the best way to go. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 9 Responses to “7 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts To Forget and What To Use Instead”

Rick Hazen

9 months ago

Such a helpful video as usual. I've been using Macs since 1985 and still learn new goodies every time I come to MacMost! Thanks, Gary

Gary Stolovy

Many great suggestions. My issue with using Launchpad (instead of Spotlight) for app search is that it jarringly interrupts your focus on task. Very often I want to launch the app while still concentrating on a displayed app, say reading a message in Mail and bringing up Contacts to get some more details about someone mentioned in the message while still reading the message. Maybe more annoying than the Spotlight shortcomings.

Gary Rosenzweig

Gary: For that, the Dock is probably the best way. The only downside would be if the app isn't in the Dock.

My comment was in context of keeping hands on the keyboard and maintaining concentration on the original app So both Launchpad would be preferred to Dock, and possibly to Spotlight in spite of the momentary flash.

Joan

Thanks again for a great post Gary. Is there a shortcut key in Pages for redo the last edit like Cmd-Y in Word? I really miss that one. Mahalo.

Joan: Not sure. What is it you are trying to do, exactly? Give me an example.

Paul Lewis

Joan Do you mean undo ?

Markus

What I think Joan means: You have a Text Edit document. You select a sentence, choose Format/Font/Show Fonts, and then use the dropdown menu there to draw a double line through the sentence. If you want to undo the double line, you can use CMD+Z. But, then you decide that you really want the double line. In Word you would use CTRL+Y, instantly restoring it. But in Text Edit, you'd have to go back to the font menu to redo that action. There doesn't seem to be a Mac equivalent to CTRL+Y.

Markus: Do you mean redo the last undo? That just Edit, Redo. It is there in TextEdit and Pages, etc. Shift+Command+Z.

7 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts To Forget and What To Use Instead

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