Forward Delete and Other Hidden Mac Keyboard Text Delete Options

Even if you don't have an extended keyboard you can still foward delete on a Mac using one of two hidden tricks. You can also delete by word, line, to the start or end of paragraphs and in a variety of different ways.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you all the different keyboard combinations you can use to delete text on your Mac.
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So I'm often asked about using your keyboard to delete characters while editing text. One of the most frequently asked questions is how to forward delete. In other words delete the character in front of the cursor rather than the one behind it. On Windows computers there is a special key for that but most Macs don't have that special key. I'm going to show you how to do it anyway. But I'm also going to show you a whole bunch of other keyboard commands you can use to delete text in various ways. 
So let's start off with the basic one. Using just the Delete key that's on all Mac keyboards. You'll find it near the upper right and you simply press the delete key and it deletes the character before the blinking text cursor. Now one thing to know about this is you can modify it with the Option key. Say you have a lot of text to delete. Deleting it one at a time, even holding the delete key down and letting it repeat, will take awhile. So instead use the Option key with delete. The first time you use it it will delete all of the characters to the left of the blinking cursor in that word. Then every time you use it after that it deletes the word before. So if you are done typing and want to delete the last few words, instead of pressing delete a whole bunch of times like that, just use Option Delete and you can quickly delete word by word. 
Now you can also use the Command Key to modify delete. If you do that it deletes all of the characters on that line before the blinking text cursor. So here I can easily delete all the way back to the beginning of that line with Command Delete. 
Now how about forward delete. Well, a lot of Mac keyboards actually have a forward delete button. If you have a Mac Extended Keyboard, that's one that has a numeric keypad on the right, you're going to find a second Delete key just to the right of the first delete key. It's grouped there with the Home and Page Up and Page Down buttons. Simply using that key will delete the character after the blinking text cursor. You can continue to delete with it. But what if you don't have that key on your keyboard? For instance if you have a MacBook you're going to have the smaller keyboard and it is not going to have the numeric keypad or the Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End buttons and it won't have that forward delete key. Well, you can get that same functionality if you look for the fn or Globe Key on your keyboard. Newer Macs have both the characters fn and the Globe on it. Older Macs will just have fn on this key. But it works the same way. Hold the fn key down and then press Delete. You'll get the same action as using the forward delete button on an extended keyboard. Now you can combine this with the Option key just like you can the Delete key. So I can use fn delete but also with Option and it will delete everything in the word after the blinking text cursor. Then it will continue to Delete word by word every time I tap Delete while holding fn and Option. 
Now there is another way to Delete and Forward Delete on any Mac Keyboard. That's using Control D and Control H. That's the Control key; not the Command key. Control H acts like the regular delete key deleting the character before. Control D acts like a Forward Delete key deleting the characters after the cursor. Now remember how I showed you you can use Command Delete to delete everything before the cursor but only on that line. What would be nice to also have a Command delete everything on the same line after the blinking text cursor. In fact Control K will sort of do that but it actually deletes all the characters to the right of the blinking text cursor in that paragraph. So if I use it here you could see it basically clears out all the characters to the end of the paragraph. So if I had typed a bunch of things and I don't want to keep all of this I can simply put the cursor there and do Control K and you can see how it gets rid of everything to the right. 
Now you can also do a lot using two keyboard commands. The first to Select and the second to Delete. For instance, I can select anything by simply using the left and right arrow keys to position the blinking text cursor and then hold Shift down and now Shift will move the cursor but select while it is doing it. So I can use Left and Right to select what I want and then simply hit the Delete key and it deletes everything that is selected. So when you have a selection Delete works a little differently. Now deleting the character before the cursor but deleting the selection. In fact Forward delete will work the same way. It does exactly the same thing in that situation as well as Control D and Control H. So moving with arrow keys will do a similar thing as Delete will do with the Option key. Hold Option and now you're moving by word. Now holding Shift will actually select by word. So Shift Option and then left or right arrow keys will select by word. Once you have a selection once again you can use any of those delete combinations to delete what is selected. 
So this does allow you to delete to the beginning of the paragraph. I'm going to select in the second paragraph here so you can see it in action. If I use Shift Up Arrow it selects everything from that position in the line to the same position above it. Then Shift Down Arrow will do the same. I could also use Shift Command Left to get everything to the left side of the cursor in a line. Shift Command Right to get everything to the right side and then, of course, Delete.
But what I really want is to delete everything from the blinking cursor to the beginning of the paragraph. To do that hold Shift and Option and then Up Arrow. That selects everything to the beginning of the paragraph. Then you can use Delete right afterwards to delete everything to the beginning of the paragraph. So that's kind of the inverse of using Control K which will delete everything in that paragraph after the cursor. Of course you can also use Shift Option and then Down Arrow to select everything to the end of the paragraph and then use Delete which also deletes the end of the paragraph mark. 
Which brings up another way to Delete. You can delete and replace at the same time by simply typing. So, for instance, if I were to select this letter here and say I want to delete it and replace it with a new letter like the letter T, I could just type T. It deletes the selection and replaced it with what I typed. So in this situation where I do Shift Option Down you could see it selects the end of the paragraph there. Instead of deleting with the Delete key and ending up with that mess I can delete by hitting Return which deletes all the selected text but replaces it with a Return. 
By the way another way to select everything from the cursor to the beginning is Shift Control A. You can use Shift Control E to select everything to the end. Notice how that doesn't include the paragraph there. So I could actually hit Delete and you can see it preserves the paragraph change without adding an extra line or anything. 
Another way to Delete is using Command X. So if I select some text, like this, and I use Command X it seems to delete it. What it is actually doing is Edit and then Cut. So it is deleting the text but also adding it to the Clipboard. So I can Command X and then go somewhere else and Command V to Paste. But I don't have to paste. I could just use Command X as a way to delete. Keep in mind though if you have something saved in the Clipboard, something else you've copied, Command X will replace it with whatever was removed. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Quick Reference:
Delete previous character = Delete or Control+H
Delete next character = Forward Delete key, or FN+Delete or Control+D
Delete previous word = Option+Delete
Delete next word = Option+FN+Delete
Delete to start of line = Command+Delete
Delete remainder of paragraph = Control+K
Select back to the start of paragraph and delete = Shift+Option+Up then Delete, or Shift+Control+A then Delete
Select to the end of paragraph and delete = Shift+Option+Down then Delete, or Shift+Control+E then Delete
Cut = Command+X

Comments: 4 Responses to “Forward Delete and Other Hidden Mac Keyboard Text Delete Options”

Dick English

2 years ago

Thanks for this tutorial and the Quick Reference! (How do you remember all of these tricks????)

Arnie Keller

Is there a forward delete in iOS?

Gary Rosenzweig

Arnie: Maybe with some sort of specialty third-party keyboard.

Colin

Many thanks for this. On my old iMac I had a full sized keyboard with the delete and backspace keys. My new iMac (and MacBook) only have backspace and I had really been missing the delete key.

Comments Closed.

Forward Delete and Other Hidden Mac Keyboard Text Delete Options

Comments: 4 Responses to “Forward Delete and Other Hidden Mac Keyboard Text Delete Options”

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