Creating Custom Keyboard Shortcuts on a Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can create custom keyboard shortcuts on your Mac. 

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So in macOS you can create a custom keyboard shortcut for anything you find in the Menu Bar. The functionality to do this is in System Settings. Now if you are using macOS Monterey or before, that is System Preferences. Then you would go to Keyboard. In macOS Ventura or later you go to System Settings and then you scroll down here and go to Keyboard there as well. Then you'll find Keyboard Shortcuts as a button. Click that and now you can access a variety of different keyboard shortcuts and customize them. Almost all of the categories here listed on the left refer to things that are universal throughout the system. Like, for instance, taking screen shots. These  are things you can find in the Menu Bar. So you can look through here and see Keyboard Shortcuts. You can use the Checkbox here to activate or deactivate the item and you can double click here and assign a new keyboard shortcut to it. 

Now to create custom keyboard shortcuts you go down to App Shortcuts. This section is a little different than all the rest. There's a list here and you could expand each part of the list like that.  You're only going to see one item here by default. But you also have plus and minus buttons. This is where you can add your own custom keyboard shortcuts. To do this first you need to note the Menu Item name. So I'm going to switch here for Safari and if you look at the Menu Bar here and look at each menu we can see various Keyboard Shortcuts for things like Command N for new window or Command L for open location. But occasionally we'll see one that doesn't have a keyboard shortcut assigned. For instance, under Bookmarks, Show State Page doesn't have a keyboard shortcut but it could be useful to have one. So let's create a custom keyboard shortcut for this. So the most important thing we need to do here is note the exact name of the Menu Item. In this case Show Start Page. Three separate words, each one Capitalized. You have to get the Menu Item name exactly right for this to work. Now it doesn't matter what menu it is so the fact that this is the Bookmark Menu, not let's say the History Menu, doesn't matter. All you need is Show Start Page.

Now back here in System Settings we click the Plus button to add a keyboard shortcut. The first thing we need to do is select an Application. Whenever possible you should narrow it down to a specific application so there are  no conflicts with similar menu names elsewhere. So I'm going to select Safari here as the Application. The menu title needs to be the exact menu item name. So, Show Start Page. Three separate words all capitalized spelled exactly like this. Now we go to Keyboard Shortcuts. You could actually just type the keyboard shortcut here. Like, for instance, if we did Command Shift S we could type that and it applies it here. But you could also double click in the little field here to the right. It is kind of hard to see but you can do that. So you put the selection cursor there and select what's there. You could change it to something else. Like let's do Command Option S instead. Now we're going to click Done. So the next thing you want to do is you want to check to make sure that you got it right. To do that go back into the app. Go to the menu item you want and check to see that the keyboard shortcut is there. You could see here that it is. So now we know we typed it correctly and did everything right. Let's give it a try. We'll use the keyboard shortcut and we see that it does exactly what we want it to do.

Now if it is not working the first thing you should suspect is that you typed the name wrong. So double check to make sure that it is right. Unfortunately there is no way to edit the name here. So if you did get it wrong what you need to do is use the minus button here to remove it and then the plus button to recreate it. The same thing if you have accidentally placed it under the wrong app. If you specified the wrong app you're going to have to select it and remove it and add it again under the correct app. 

However, if you do want to change the keyboard shortcut later on you don't need to recreate it for that. You can simply double click here on the right and when you see the blinking text cursor there you can add a different keyboard shortcut for that item. So you can easily change the keyboard shortcut used but it is a little bit more difficult to correct it if the name is wrong or it's under the wrong application. 

If it is still now working one thing you might want to try is Quitting the app that has the shortcut, like Pages in this case, and relaunching it. You shouldn't need to do that but occasionally if there seems to be a glitch simply restart any app seems to fix it. 

Let's try another one. In Mail here there's File and then Save Attachments which doesn't have a keyboard shortcut but that could be useful if you need to do it a lot. So note the exact name here. Save Attachments and then there are three dots also known as an ellipsis afterwards. Then we go back to System Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, App Shortcuts. We're going to click here to add a new one. We'll set this to Mail as the application. Then we're going to type the new title. So Save Attachments. Now remember there were those 3 dots or an ellipsis afterwards. You could type either one. Option and semicolon gets you an ellipsis or you can just type 3 dots. It will recognize either one of those as a match. Now we want to type the keyboard shortcut. So let's do Shift Command S for that. Now in the Mail app if we go to File, we'll find Save Attachments and there is the keyboard shortcut. 

Now I told you before that it didn't matter what the name of the Menu was. So it doesn't matter if it was Format Menu, Arrange Menu, View Menu it's the name of the menu item. That's true even if it is in a submenu. So here we've got Format, then Font, and then we have Strikethrough. So it doesn't matter that it is in the Format Menu. It doesn't matter that it is in the Font submenu. All that matters is the last step. This case Strikethrough. You could see it is all one word with a capital S. So I'm going to add one for that. This is in the application Pages and the Menu Title is Strikethrough like that. Now I'm going to do a keyboard shortcut Control Option Command X for that. Done. Now back in Pages I go to Format and then Font and then I could see Strikethrough is set with that keyboard shortcut. I can give that a trial. Select some text here. I'll use the keyboard shortcut and you could see it does strikethrough. Notice that since the same name is used to remove the strikethrough it doesn't change the name at all. It is not Remove Strikethrough. It's just Strikethrough. I can use this to toggle the Strikethrough. 

Now sometimes the menu item does change. For instance we go to View and Show Arrange Tools here in Pages. We get the Arrange Tools but now we look under View and it's Hide Arrange Tools. In that situation we would need to add them both. So let's just set the first one under Pages we'll do Show Arrange Tools and we'll set that to Option Command A. Done. Now in Pages if we go to View, Show Arrange Tools is that. I can use that keyboard shortcut and it brings it up. But it won't take it away. I can't use it again. There is no more Show Arrange Tools there. It's now Hide Arrange Tools. So I need to add that one as well. So under Pages, I'll do Hide Arrange Tools and I could assign a different keyboard shortcut to it. But I could also assign the same keyboard shortcut. So Option Command A. Add that. Now when I look under View I'll see Hide Arrange Tools has Option Command A and there is no conflict there because Show Arrange Tools and Hide Arrange Tools are never there at the same time. So now I can use those keyboard shortcuts to get rid of it and to bring it back. 

Now you could also change an existing keyboard shortcut the same exact way. So, for instance, under Format, Font you see Show Fonts is Command T. So I'll Add that one here for Pages I'll add Show Fonts and I'll change it to Shift Command T. Now back in Pages here I see Format, Font, Show Font is now Shift Command T instead of Command T. 

What happens when you use a keyboard shortcut that already exists? Well, it simply supersedes the existing keyboard shortcut. So, for instance, if I want to change Show Fonts here to Command B that's already the shortcut for Bold. So I'm going to set this to Command B now. Here in Pages if I look under Format, Font you can see Show Fonts is Command B and the Command B for Bold is now missing. Bold no longer has the keyboard shortcut.

Now I know I'm also going to get asked about how to know if there is a conflict ahead of time. There's no way to do that. Most of the time the straight Command and a letter keyboard shortcut are already taken. But if you Shift Command or Option Command or a combination like Control Option Command and then a letter there are usually a lot more of those available. But if you do happen to choose one that is already in use it's not going to hurt anything. It just means that the original use for the keyboard shortcut won't be there anymore. You see how easy it is to change the keyboard shortcuts later on. So if you make a mistake like this, use Command B for something, and you realize Oh No I want to use that for Bold you can simply go back and change this to something else.

That's a look at creating your own custom keyboard shortcuts. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.