How To Use the Mac Function Keys

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the function keys at the top of your Mac's Keyboard. 

So your Mac's Keyboard comes with a row at the top that is known as the Function Keys. These function keys serve not one but two different purposes depending upon how you're holding down another key onto the keyboard.  The functions are actually shown right on the keys. So you've got the symbols there that just have the letter F and then a number.  Like F1, F2, and F3. When you are using the keys to generate these characters they are known as F keys. These are special basically invisible characters. There's nothing that is typed by them. But they do actually send a signal to your Mac and that can be used for Keyboard Shortcuts. In addition to that the symbols at the top of these keys also can be used for special features. For instance they can be used to change the screen brightness or raise or lower the volume.

Now which function these keys perform depends on this other key at the bottom left corner of your Mac's keyboard. All modern Mac Keyboards put it right here at the bottom left. This key is known as the Globe Key or the fn key. In fact notice here on this keyboard, the most popular one sold with iMacs, Mac Minis, and Mac Studios, that it just has a globe symbol on it. However, if you look at some other Macs, like the keyboard on the current MacBook Pros, you'll see that it has both a globe symbol and the letters fn on it. Sometimes if you go back long enough to older Macs you'll only see fn on this key. Or if you buy a third party keyboard this key will only have the letter fn on it. If you've got the Pro Mac Keyboard, the one with the numeric keypad, you'll still find the fn key at the bottom left corner as long as you have the latest version of this keyboard. Older versions of this keyboard put the key here which was an odd place for it because it was very hard to press it even though it is something you need to use all the time. 

So regardless where the key is on your keyboard the general idea is when you press and hold this key down it changes what these function keys do. So, for instance, by default if you don't hold the Globe or fn key down and you press one of these function keys it will send the F1 or F2 or F3 signal to your Mac and you can use that as a keyboard shortcut in different apps. However, if you hold down the Globe or fn key, much like you hold down the shift key on you keyboard to type an upper case letter it will then control your Mac, in some way, matching the symbols that are at the top of each key. Now, I said this is how it works by default. You can change this and switch it to do the opposite.  If you go into System Settings and then look at Keyboard on the left and then once there look for the Keyboard Shortcut button. Now look for Function Keys on the left. You'll see the same toggle here. This switch change how this works. It does the opposite way. So if you were to turn this Off then by default it will use the keys as those Special Features Key, like changing the volume and you have to hold down Globe or fn key to use them as F1, F2, F3 and so on.

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Let's take a look at these special functions. F1 and F2 map to screen brightness, lowering or raising screen brightness. It will do this for any MacBook model and iMac and other Macs if you've got a 3rd party screen that will work with these. It's very possible to buy a 3rd party screen, connect it to your Mac, and find out that these brightness controls don't affect it at all. But you have to use the screen's separate control, usually built into the screen itself with buttons underneath and so on to control the brightness. Sometimes it depends on the screen. Sometimes not just the screen but how you have it connected, like whether you are using Display Port to connect to your Mac or HDMI to connect to your Mac. One may work but the other may not.

Now you've got these media playback controls here. Play, Pause in the middle and Rewind and Forward on the left and right. So if you're playing media, like for instance music in the Music App or perhaps a video in the TV App, you can use these keys to control playback. They'll also work with other apps and often with media that's playing on the webpage, like a video on the webpage. But not all the time. It depends how the webpage is built or the 3rd party app, whether it accepts the video from these. On the right side you've got three volume controls. The first one is a Mute button. So it will mute or unmute the audio on your Mac. Then you've got Lower and Raise Volume. Then here in the middle we've got these keys that simply trigger an action on your Mac to access a feature of your Mac. Without the current Mac Keyboards these will bring up Mission Control, bring up Spotlight, start Dictation or turn On or Off DoNot Disturb Focus Mode. However, if you go older Mac Keyboards you will find that these keys actually perform something different. You have to look at the symbols on the keys to figure out what they do. Of course all of these keys do something different or they may not work at all if you've got a 3rd party keyboard connected to your Mac. 

So something all Mac users need to do is decide whether the switch in System Settings is turned On or Off. If you play a lot of media on your Mac and you find it useful to control media and the volume then you may want to have this switch Off so that these keys can simply be pressed by themselves to play and pause video and audio and the volume controls can be used without the Globe or fn key at all. However, if you use a lot of apps that use F keys for Keyboard Shortcuts, like for instance PhotoShop uses a lot of these, then you may want to leave the switch on so that you can press these keys and for instance trigger F5 or F8 without having to hold the Globe or fn key down at all. Likewise if you like settings your own custom keyboard shortcuts for things then these F keys are very handy. You can use them in combination with other modifier keys like Command, Shift, Option, Control. So you've got lots of variety there of different keyboard shortcuts. Like, for instance, here I've set Shift Command F3 to trigger the Strikethrough menu item which is found in Pages, TextEdit and lots of other apps where you work with text. I'm able to use an F key and not have to worry about assigning one of the letter keys on my keyboard to this. 

Having that switch turned On means I don't have to add the fn or Globe key to the modifier keys I'm holding down for this to work. But if I had the switch turned Off I would have to have the fn or Globe key held down in addition to Shift and Command in order for F3 to trigger strikethrough. Remember it's easy to change your mind. This is a setting to be toggled Off and On as much as you like. So, try it one way and try it the other way and see which one you like. If months down the road you decide to change your mind, maybe start using an app that uses a lot of F keys, or maybe you start playing a lot of media on your Mac, you may just want to switch it to the other one. It's easy to change so don't worry too much about getting it right.

Now I told you before about the fact that older ProMac keyboards have the fn key in an inconvenient location. In addition some 3rd party Mac keyboards may have it in an even worse location or it maybe missing entirely. If that is the case you do have an option here. If you go into System Settings and into Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, but this time go to Modifier Keys, you can change how the modifier keys work. You can take the Caps Lock key and change it from Caps Lock to the Globe Key. This allows you have a key or a second key on your keyboard that works just like the Globe or fn key. Also note that those special features can be accessed in many different ways beside those keys. For instance Control Center, by default, has Playback Controls. Those same 3 playback controls that you would have on those keys. It has Display Brightness and it has Sound controls. So most of the functionality of the Function Keys is available in Control Center and some of it can be used with other Keyboard Shortcuts. For instance Mission Control defaults keyboard shortcut is Control  and Up Arrow. Spotlight default keyboard shortcut is Command and Space. Dictation's default is actually to depress the Globe key twice. You can change all of these in that same place in System Settings that we have been looking at. The Dictation Controls are actually there on the main part of the Keyboard Settings. Whereas Mission Control and Spotlight, those can be set down in the submenu under Keyboard Shortcuts. In addition you'll find a Do Not Disturb keyboard shortcut that by default is set to nothing so you can define it, that is any key you want, and you can also do the same for Display Brightness which is usually set to F14 and F15 which are only available on the Pro Keyboards but you can find those as another set of keys and have different keyboard shortcuts for all four of those special key in the Function Key row.

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.