10 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Just the Keyboard

It may seem that there are things you cannot do on your Mac without using the mouse or trackpad. But there are usually keyboard commands and shortcuts that will allow you to keep your fingers on the keyboard if you prefer.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten things that people often use the mouse or trackpad for that you can do with just the keyboard.
First let's start with selecting text. You might be used to using your mouse or trackpad to select text. But you can do it with just the keyboard, which is really handy because you probably have your hands on the keyboard while you're typing anyway. 
So, of course, you can use the arrow keys to move the text cursor back and forth. But you can also hold the Shift Key and that movement will select text. Shift Right Arrow will select one character at a time, like that. You can type to replace the text or paste or whatever you want to do. You can also use the Option Key. Option and Right and Left Arrow jumps by word. Then if you add Shift to that you can select one word at a time which makes it even easier to select. You can, of course, use the Down and Up Arrows to move through the text as well. If you use Shift that will select there. If you use Option Down Arrow it goes by paragraph. So if you want to select the entire paragraph Shift Option Down will do it and continue to use the Down Arrow to select one paragraph at a time. 
Another thing that people often use the mouse or trackpad for is when they want to type an emoji or special character. You can bring up the Emoji & Special Character Viewer with a keyboard shortcut. Either Control Command Space or you can use the fn or Globe Key on your keyboard and E for emoji. This brings up the Special Viewer. From here you may be tempted to use your mouse or trackpad to select the character or even scroll through. But if you scroll all the way to the top there's a Search Box there. You don't actually have to scroll to the top to reveal the Search Box.  You can just start typing. So if I do Control Command Space and then start typing it assumes that I want to fill in that Search Box and it will do that. Now I get results that I can use the Arrow Keys to move around to select the one I want and Return to insert it in the text. 
Now to launch Apps you might be tempted to use your mouse or trackpad to go to the Dock to click on an app or click on Launchpad and then use your pointer to select the app. But you can do it with just the keyboard. The way a lot of people like to do it is use Command Space to bring up the Spotlight Menu. Then type the name of the app until it becomes the top pick, like that. This will work great and only use the keyboard except that sometimes Spotlight can be a little slow, with maybe a second or two delay. Instead you can use Launchpad. A keyboard shortcut can bring up Launchpad. If you go to System Settings and then go to Keyboard, go to Keyboard Shortcuts here. Click and then under Launchpad & Dock you'll see Show Launchpad and you can set a keyboard shortcut. So just double click in here and then set a keyboard shortcut. I'm going to do Control Option Command Space. Then Done. Sometimes you may actually have a dedicated Launchpad key on your keyboard. Depends on which keyboard you have. Now you can use this keyboard shortcut to bring up Launchpad. Then just start typing the name of the app, just like you would with Spotlight. The difference is that Launchpad can be a lot faster than Spotlight. It only shows apps. It is not going to give you other results as well. Hit Return to launch the app.
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Now here's one that most people know about. You can switch apps using Command and Tab. So if you have multiple apps open hold the Command Key down and then press Tab while continuing to hold the Command Key down and you have the App Switcher here. You can select a different app and Release and it will bring that app to the front. But in addition to that you can also go between the Windows in your apps. So here I've got two Pages windows open. You can see them both there. Most people would use a click on that window to switch to it assuming you can see the other window. In this case you can't. But Command and then the key just above the Tab Key on US keyboards, has a backtick and a Tilde on it, that will switch between all of the windows in the current app. 
Now a lot of these things you can do in the Dock. You can launch an app in the Dock, you can also click and hold on one of the apps there and you can switch between windows. It would be nice if you could use the Dock with just the keyboard. It turns out you can! There's a keyboard shortcut for it. If you go into System Settings and then Keyboard, and then Keyboard Shortcuts and you look under Keyboard here you've got Move Focus To The Dock. You can turn that On and set it to the default or something else like Control F3. But today you don't need to actually use that Keyboard Shortcut because there is a different Hardwired keyboard shortcut. The fn or Globe Key and A. Use that and it brings up the Dock with the previous item selected, in this case Finder. Now I can use the Arrow Keys to go through all the different apps and a Return will launch the app, like that. I can use an Up Arrow to bring up the Menu and jump to a recent document or do other things like, for instance, in Pages here I can start a new document right from the Dock. All just with using the keyboard. 
You can do the same things with the Menu Bar. So there is a keyboard shortcut that you can turn on and customize. Control F2 is the default. But there is also a new shortcut for that with the Globe Key. Use the Globe Key or fn key on older keyboards and then M for Menu Bar. Notice how the Apple Menu now is highlighted. I can use there right arrow to move between menus, the left arrow to go back and down to go into the menus and Return will select. Another way to do it is to use Command Shift and then the Slash or Question Mark key on US keyboards. This does the same thing but goes right to the Help Menu, right to the little Search Box at the top of the Help Menu. Now you can use the Left or Right Arrow keys and Return to continue to navigate through the Menu Bar. But since you're already in the Search field here you can start typing and it will show you menu items right at the top. So if you're not sure where the menu item is this is a quick way to find it. But you can also use this to select it. So I'll use the Down Arrow Key to go here. It shows you where it is but I don't actually need to go there. I can just use Return and it will activate that menu. 
When you go to Save a file in an app, like I'm going to save this file here in Pages, you can use Command S as the shortcut for File Save. The first time you do this it is going to prompt you where to Save. Now it looks like you really do need to use the mouse or trackpad to navigate around here. You need to click on something in the Sidebar here. You need to click on the location and select the location, like this. But if you want to use the keyboard you can because there is a keyboard shortcut in the Finder to allow you to type a path. That actually works in Open and Saved dialogues as well. It is Shift Command and G. This brings up this space where you can type in a path. But you can also use the Down Arrow to select Recents or you can just start typing. Note that you can substitute a Tilde character and a Slash for the Home Folder and then you can start typing. In here you can even use Tab to complete a word, like this. I can take the first couple of letters there and Tab to Complete. You can go to any location in the Finder. Then since it shows Recents there probably after using this a few times you're going to have all of your most common locations just there. Easy to access with the arrow keys instead. 
Now you can also move files using only the keyboard. It's a little tricky to figure this out. So say you're looking at your files in a folder here. I can use the Down and Up Arrows to select a file. Now to actually start the move I can use Copy, so Command C. Now I just need to go to the new location. So you can use various keyboard shortcuts for this. One useful one is Command Up Arrow to go up a level. So now I can go to another folder here and I can do Command O to open the current folder. Select it. Now this is where I want the file to go. So how do I get it there. If I do Command V it is going to paste a copy there. But Option Command V will move the file there. So I've just moved by using Command C, navigated around using keyboard shortcuts, and then Option Command V to move it to the location. 
Now most people to delete a file will drag it to the Trash. I haven't done that in years! The way I delete files is use the keyboard shortcut. So with a file selected you can go to File and there is Move to Trash. You can see the keyboard shortcut there. Command Delete. So that is all you need. If you have the file selected just use Command Delete and it is the same as dragging it to the trash. 
Now what if you want to perform calculations on your Mac. There is so many different ways to do that especially now with Math Notes. But let's say you don't want to launch the Notes App and create a new note. You don't want to go to the Calculator App which is a whole bunch of steps to get there. You can do quick math calculations using only Spotlight. Remember I showed before where you can use Command Space to bring up Spotlight. Well you can do math right here. Just type the math equation and it will come up with the answer. You can use formulas as well like that. You can even do conversions. So you can do things like this and it will give you a conversion like that. You can even paste the results. So if you want to do a quick calculation you can do something like this. Now if I do Command C and then I use Escape to dismiss spotlight, just two escapes will do that. One to clear it and one to dismiss it. Then if I do Command V it will paste the result. 
Alright, so here's a bonus one. You can browse the web pretty easily with just the keyboard. It may seem difficult at first because you can't really click on links. But there's a way. The first keyboard shortcut you really should know though is Command L and that will select whatever is in the Address Bar of the current tab. So you can now type a search or just a URL and jump to a new webpage. So pretty easy to go from page to page. Also notice that when you start typing you get suggestions. You get bookmarks and history and all that. You can use the arrow keys to get to those. But how can you select the links without using the mouse or trackpad? Well to do that you want to go into System Settings and enable a special Accessibility Setting. Go into there and then under keyboard look for Full Keyboard Access and turn this On. You can read more on how to use it here. Once you turn this On now you can navigate around in a webpage. Use the Tab to go between different elements including links. Know that sometimes you can get stuck in certain elements or even in like Toolbar and Sidebar items. Using Option and Tab seems to always free you of that going just to the links and other elements of the webpage itself. I know that to scroll, if your keyboard doesn't have Page Up and Page Down, you can use fn or the Globe Key and the down arrow key or up arrow key to scroll. 
Note that for most other things in macOS you can also just use the keyboard because Apple designed macOS to be highly accessible. Meaning that people that can only use the keyboard can navigate around and do most things. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “10 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Just the Keyboard”

Jose Vasquez

5 months ago

Just wanted to add the space bar to scroll a webpage option. So many things that can be done with the keyboard that I have not yet implemented. Thanks for the reminder to do so.

Sheldon

4 months ago

Thanks bunches

mark has

3 months ago

Just bought new M4 MacMini with Apple Extended Keyboard.

There is a NEW KEY, "Contextual Menu" key:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-mini/magic-keyboard-with-touch-id-apdce0a60883/mac
...
"Use your keyboard to right-click. Use the new Contextual Menu key to open a shortcut menu with your keyboard."

If not using Apple Extended Keyboard, do you know key combination for Contextual Menu?

Long time mac user, thanks for video, some new and forgoten tips!