Mac Typing and Editing Keyboard Shortcuts

Using the arrow and modifier keys will let you efficiently write and edit on your Mac without needing to take your hand off the keyboard to use a mouse or trackpad.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's talk about some keyboard commands you should know if you write or edit text on your Mac. 
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Now lots of people love to use keyboard shortcuts for things. But not everybody. Some people prefer to use the mouse or trackpad to get things done. A lot of times this has to do with what you're doing on your Mac. For instance if you're manipulating graphics or objects on the screen using the mouse or trackpad it can be inconvenient to switch your hands to the keyboard to use a keyboard shortcut. But on the other hand if you're typing, so you already have your fingers on the keyboard, then it makes sense to use some keyboard commands there to move around in your text rather than having to switch one hand to a mouse or trackpad. 
So here I am in Pages. But this should work in all sorts of different apps. For instance like TextEdit or in Mail or even in filling out forms on the web. Now of course there are tons of keyboard commands in the Menu Bar. A lot of them have to do with working with text. For instance in the Edit Menu you've got Cut, Copy, and Paste. In the Format Menu you've got things like Bold, Italic, Underline, and so on. I'm not really talking about those in particular. I'm talking about actually moving the text cursor around. 
Now the Text Cursor is that blinking line you see to the left of the first character here. Usually it's black but in Pages the default color is this orange. A lot of people use the terms cursor and pointer interchangeably. Technically this blinking line inside of text is the cursor. The arrow that you move around with your mouse or trackpad is the pointer. 
As we type the cursor will stay to the right side of the text showing it's exactly where the next character will go. But we can move it around if you use the mouse or trackpad. Notice here now I've got the pointer here. It's an arrow. But if I move it over text it changes to this other shape that shows me that if I click somewhere it will reposition the text cursor. So this is a case of the pointer and the cursor working together. 
But you don't need to actually use the mouse or trackpad at all to move the text cursor around. Instead you can use the Arrow Keys on your keyboard. The simplest example is to use the right arrow key to move the text cursor one character to the right. You can, of course, use the left arrow key to move it one character to the left. If you hold it down it will move by itself. You don't have to keep tapping. But it will do so very slowly. As a matter of fact even tapping very quickly with your finger will take a while to get you to the next word or line. Now you can use the Up and Down Arrows as well. Going down will take you to the closest text cursor position right underneath where you were. So you can continue to move down, like that, and move Up as well. So this makes it a little quicker to get somewhere. 
But this is where knowing more advanced commands comes in handy. If you really want to move around quickly in your text you probably want to do it by word not by character. To do that just hold down the Option Key and then use the right or left Arrow Keys and notice that the text cursor will always go to the end of the next word. So you can quickly jump forward by word or backward with the left arrow key. If you use the Option Key with the down arrow it jumps to the end of the current paragraph. You can see it jumping there at the end of that paragraph. If I use it again it will jump to the end of the next paragraph and so on. You can use the Option and Up Arrow Key to jump to the beginning of each paragraph. So just by using the Option Key you can move very quickly through large amounts of text. 
Now another modifier key that works with the arrow keys is the Command Key. If I hold down Command and use the Right Arrow Key it goes to the end of the current line of text. So you can see it go there. If I use it again it just will stay there. Command and left arrow will go to the start of the current line of text. So I can go to a line like this and if I want to jump to the end, Command Right Arrow will do it for me. Now Command and Down Arrow will jump to the end of the document. Command Up Arrow will jump to the beginning of the document. It may be not so useful when composing a long book but very useful when working with a smaller piece of text like a posting or an email. 
Now in addition to moving around you could also select text using just the keyboard. The modifier key to use for that is the Shift Key. You can use this with the Arrow keys. If I hold Shift down and go to the right with the Right Arrow Key, notice it is not just moving the text cursor, it is actually increasing the selection to the right. If I just use the right arrow key by itself now it releases the selection and now I just have the cursor there that I'm moving around. I could use Shift and the Left Arrow Key to increase the selection to the left. If I go with Shift Right Arrow you could see how there is a cursor there. You just don't see it and I'm actually increasing or decreasing the selection. If I go all the way here to the right you could see it will increase it to the right and so on. So you can work with text to select some. Once you have text like this selected you could, of course, use other keyboard commands like Command X for Cut, Command C for Copy, and Command V for Paste for working with that text. 
Of course another thing you can do once you have something selected is simply replace it. So I'll do Shift Option Right Arrow to select this entire word. Then I can just start typing and it replaces what is there. You can also combine the Option and Shift keys to select by word. So, Option Shift and to the right I'm selecting by word, I can select large pieces of text very quickly. Option Shift and Down Arrow will do it by paragraph. 
Another one I want to mention that's in the Edit Menu here is Select All, simply because so many people don't seem to use this. So if you want to select All your text, again not useful in maybe a book, but very useful in a shorter piece of text that you're writing, Command A just selects everything. Now you can apply changes to it, Copy it, Delete it, Replace it, etc. 
Now you can also use the fn key or Globe key on your keyboard with the arrow keys. But it doesn't actually work with the text cursor, it's working with Scrolling. So, if I were to use the fn and right arrow key it scrolls to the end. It's the equivalent to the end key that's on larger keyboards. fn and left arrow scrolls to the beginning. fn down is the equivalent to Page Down and fn and Up is equivalent to Page Up. Notice that none of these change the position of the text cursor. They just scroll like using two fingers on your trackpad or on the surface of your mouse. 
Now speaking of deleting. Say you wanted to delete some characters. Usually you would position the text cursor right after the character you want deleted. Then press the Delete Key on your keyboard. But if you ever want to do the opposite and delete what is in front of the text cursor you can do that. It's called a Forward Delete. You can do it by holding the fn or Globe Key and pressing delete. That will delete forward. There are also some more obscure commands for doing this. Using Control and D will Delete the next character. Whereas using Control and H will delete the previous character. 
Now those are actually holdovers from older text editing apps that predate computers using things like mice and trackpads. There are a whole bunch of other ones that are supported pretty widely in situations on your Mac when you edit text. Here's a list of them in order of increasing strangeness. They're good to know about but in general most things that you can do, you can do using arrow keys and modifiers. So get comfortable using these modifiers and arrow keys if you like to edit text and would rather keep your hands on the keyboard the entire time instead of having to move to the mouse or trackpad to reposition the text cursor.
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “Mac Typing and Editing Keyboard Shortcuts”

Melody Whitaker

11 months ago

Love your tips! Thank you!

Myron Gochnauer

Single keystroke Shortcuts I miss:
1) Delete-to-end-of-line and Delete-to-beginning-of line
2) Delete-word-forward and Delete-word-back
3) Return to previous pointer position or cursor position (for those times when I accidentally jump somewhere I didn't intend. (A kind of Crtl-Z for cursor or pointer movement)
4) Insert text with a special typeface or colour wherever I put the cursor (for adding comments or questions about existing text).

Gary Rosenzweig

Control-K will delete to the end of the line. Shift–Command–Left Arrow selects to the beginning, and then you can use Delete to delete it. Option+Delete and FN+Option Delete do words. For comments look into the change tracking stuff. https://macmost.com/using-commenting-and-tracking-in-mac-pages.html

Esther Warda

10 months ago

Hi Gary. As always great information.

I love typing on desktop because I have total control. But when it comes to iPad and iPhone, it’s so frustrating. Have you ever done a video like this but for mobiles devices? If so, I’d love to watch that one.

Esther: I don't think you'll find many of these for iOS or iPadOS. What about it do you find frustrating? Are you using an actual keyboard, or the virtual one on the screen.

Luz Wilson

Thank you, you rock. I am especially thankful for the scrolling tips using the FN key. I am challenged with physical mobility and have a hard time scrolling using the mouse pad with two fingers so it is very helpful to do it with the keyboard.

Jerry

^D for forward-delete is life-changing. Thank you.