Multi-Step Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know

Sometimes more than one keyboard shortcut can be use in rapid succession to perform an action. Here are some examples of combining keyboard shortcuts to perform various tasks and increase your productivity.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at some multi-step keyboard shortcuts that you should know.
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So I often talk about keyboard shortcuts but usually they're just one step. You use one combination on the keyboard and it performs an action. However, there are many keyboard shortcuts that are multi-step. Use one keyboard shortcut to set something up and then another one to complete the action. A lot of them have to do with using the keyboard shortcut Command A, select All. For instance here I've got some text in TextEdit and let's say I want to clear this out and start again. To select everything I do Command A and then to delete I can choose the Delete key. Another example would be here in the Messages App I started typing a message and I realize, no that's not right. The quickest way to get back to nothing in the message is Command A then Delete. 
But you could also use this for a variety of other things. For instance you could make everything Bold by doing Command A and then Command B, since Command B is Bold. Command A also works in a variety of other situations. For instance here I'm in List View in the Finder. Let's say I want to open up all of those folders. I can use Command A to select everything and then Command and then Command Right Arrow to open up everything. So now all the folders have been opened. If I want to close them I can do Command Left Arrow. That's also handy if you've got, say, a few folders open but most of them are not. If you do Command A it will select everything and then Command Left Arrow closes everything. So it tidies up this list here and gets me back to just having things at the top level.
Another use for it would be to Preview everything using QuickLooks. So here I've got a folder filled with files and if I did Command A, then used the Space Bar or Command Y for QuickLook it brings up QuickLook and now since I have all of those files selected I can use the Right and Left Arrows to go through them. There's also this Grid Button up here to view everything in the grid. There's a keyboard shortcut for that. It's really well hidden. You can't find it anywhere but if you experiment you would find that Command and Return switches to Grid View and now you can use the arrow keys to move through them all. 
Back to editing text for a minute, say you've got some text like this and you've got a bunch of different styles mixed in a selection of text. If you want to strip out all the styling here one way to do it would be to use the Copy Command, so Command C and then if you look under Edit you've got Paste & Match Style. Option Shift Command V. So just do that as your second step and it pastes right over what you had selected with the text but striped of all the styles. Now note it still is taking on the style of the beginning of the selection. So, for instance, if I were to select from here to here, the beginning of the selection is green and bold. So Command C and then Shift Option Command V will paste everything green and bold matching the style right there at the beginning. You can combine this three steps with Command A, then Command C, then Shift Option Command V and now it pastes all the text but with just styling that is at the very beginning of the document.
Now you may be familiar with using the App Switcher, Command and then Tab. Then you can continue to hold down the Command Key and continue to hit Tab and it will advance by one App at a time and then you can release the Command Key while a certain App is highlighted and it jumps to that App. But you can also combine this with other keys as well. So, for instance, if I want to Quit an App, like this one, while still holding the Command Key, instead of Tab or just releasing Command, I can just tap Q. Now it quits that App. Likewise you can Hide with the H key. So I can Command Tab and continue to hold down Command and Tab through and when I'm over an App I want to Hide just use H for hide. So I can go to Numbers here and Hide that as well. 
You can do a similar thing by going through Tabs in an App. Like here I am in Safari. Now I can use Control Tab to advance through the tabs. If there is a tab I want to close I can now do Command W. So I can Control Tab to the tab I want. Command W to close any tab and clean up my tabs just using those two keyboard shortcut combinations. Now if you use Spotlight, which is Command Space, and then Search for something, if you get a hit immediately and you can see how a document there is highlighted at the top, you have to have something highlighted for this to work, you can use one of two commands to actually do something. For instance, you can use Return and it will open up that document. But you could also, when you have a document highlighted like that, do Command R and it will jump to a Finder Window with that file selected. Also in Spotlight you can jump to the Dictionary App. So just type something and then without auto-completing or anything, just immediately go Command D. It will open up the Dictionary App and go right to that dictionary definition. If you want to add a third step notice that under Search you can switch dictionaries. So in this case the thesaurus is Command 3. So I can do Command 3 and it will jump right there. 
Now several times I've actually gotten asked by people how to quickly get the name of a file, like to paste it into a document or something. It seems like you just have to use the pointer and clicking and then select the file name and all of that. But, you can actually do it with some clever keyboard shortcuts. If you go to File and then look for Duplicate, hold the Option Key down and you'll find that Option Shift Command S is Save As. Now when you do Save As with that keyboard combination notice that the File name is selected. A quick Command C will Copy it. Then an Escape or Command period will dismiss it. Then you're ready with that file name in the buffer and you can paste it.
Now when you go to Save a document or Open it using the Save or Open Dialogue, there are quick ways to navigate to specific locations in the Finder. So if I'm in the Finder here notice that I can use Go and there are a bunch of Keyboard Shortcuts like Shift Command O for the Documents Folder. Those work in  Save & Open Dialogues as well. So I'll use Command S to save this new document and you could see here I'm not in the right location. But Shift Command O takes me right to the Document's folder and you can use any of the other keyboard shortcuts from the Go Menu of the Finder as well. This works for the Open Dialogue as well. Command O to open and then Shift Command and then O for the Documents Folder. If you want to go just about anywhere you can always do Command S or Command O and then do Shift Command G to open the Go To folder dialogue here and you could simply type a path if you really want to. 
Now this one needs some setup. If you're working in an App and you want to regularly export as a PDF you've got some options. For instance, in Pages here you can go to File. You could go to Export To and select PDF. You're going to get this other dialogue here. There's a bunch of different steps. Another way to do it that works in any App, even if there is no Export To PDF function, is to use File Print or Command P. Then click the PDF Button or click here and then click as Save As PDF. Now when you do that, that's a bunch of steps and it doesn't look like there's anyway to set a keyboard shortcut combination to get here. You have to select this Menu or click the PDF part of the button there. But you actually can. Even though custom keyboard shortcuts are only supposed to work on the Menu Bar there is an exception for some Menus like this one. So I'm going to go into System Settings and then I'm going to go to Keyboard. Then I'm going to create a new keyboard shortcut here under Keyboard Shortcuts in the App Shortcut Section. I'm going to click the Plus Button. I'm going to leave it for All Applications and I'm going to set the Menu Title to Save as PDF... It has to be exact. In other words a lower case a, you've got to put 3 dots after it and everything. I'm going to set the keyboard shortcut to be Command P. So that's already File Print. But there is no Save as PDF... so I'm fine in using it. If I'm done with that I go back to Pages you can see that File Print is still Command P and there's no menu that's been changed to be Command P for Save as PDF. But if I Print or Command P and now that I'm in this dialogue, I do an additional Command P it will actually allow me to Save as PDF even though I didn't actually select the Menu. It's a weird extra place that you can actually set keyboard shortcuts. 
As a matter of fact even if there is an Export as PDF menu item that you can easily access maybe already a keyboard shortcut, you may actually want to use the Open In Preview here. So you could make that the shortcut instead. It's real handy to quickly be able to go and create a document in Preview and do various things with it there from any app. So in System Settings, under Keyboard Shortcuts, I'm going to go to App Shortcuts. I'm going to get rid of this one here. Instead I'm going to do Open In Preview. There's no 3 dots and it is a lower case i. I'm going to set this to be Command P. Now, if I were to go in here and Print, Command P, and look in the Menu you could see Command P is Open in Preview. So a quick Command P, Command P will make this PDF open in Preview ready for me to Save or markup or do whatever I want to do with it.
Another common two-step thing to do with keyboard shortcuts is to do a Find, Command F, and then to type something to look for. Notice it found many of these. Now I can continue to use this here but I could also just use Escape to get out of it and then Command G to jump to each one. You can find all this under Edit, and then Find, Command F is Find. Command G is find next. It can even move backwards through them all with Shift Command G. Notice another one here is Use Selection for Find. So if you know what you want, like for instance I want to look for all instances of this, I can select it and then do Command E and it will try to find it and, of course, it found it. It's right there. But now Command G will move through all of them. 
So I hope this gives you some ideas of what you can do by looking for combinations of keyboard shortcuts and using two keyboard shortcuts right after each other to accomplish something pretty quickly really not that much harder than one. In fact, for my own App, Clip Tools, I've built this into it with the idea being that in Settings you can go in and set a global keyboard shortcut to activate the menu, in this case it is Shift Command and M. I've got that set to activate Menu. Now you can use one of the other keyboard shortcuts here to do something in a second step. For instance, under Selection Case I've got Shift Command H for Headline Case. So if you wanted to make something Headline Case you can simply do Shift Command M as your first step and then while still holding Shift and Command down just use H to activate that specific command. You can do that throughout Clip Tools. For instance if you wanted to paste the date somewhere that is Shift Command D. So Shift Command M followed by Shift Command D pastes the date. 
So I hope you found all this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Multi-Step Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know”

Roy Whelden

5 months ago

Amazing and useful!

Ken Nellis

When creating the new keyboard shortcut, I was surprised it matched on 3 dots that you entered rather than the ellipsis (…) (entered with Option-semicolon). Maybe it translates automatically?

Gerry

I love the double command-P to Save as PDF. Been using it for years. PDF super power!!

Gary Rosenzweig

Ken: Yes, it takes either in order to avoid confusion.

Norman Probst

Really helpful video. I will definitely use the Command-P keyboard shortcuts for saving and opening documents in Preview. Saves a lot of time.

Eric

That's a really useful tutorial. The command-P shortcut is now in use. Thanks Gary.

Multi-Step Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know

Comments: 6 Responses to “Multi-Step Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know”

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