The Beginner‘s Guide To Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's a beginner's guide to using keyboard shortcuts on your Mac. 

So Keyboard Shortcuts are commands or actions you can take on your Mac that only requires you to press keys on your keyboard. Usually you can do the same thing using your mouse or trackpad by clicking or clicking and dragging to take the same action. The idea is that using the keyboard can be faster especially if you are repeating the same task often. 

For instance, here I am in Pages. If I want to make some text bold and I have the text selected I can go to the Menu Bar to Format and then to the submenu, Font, and then look for Bold here and select that menu item using just my trackpad or you can use a mouse. That will make the text bold. But notice that when I went to this menu command here it showed me a keyboard shortcut to the right. You can see there the symbol Bold that's on the Command Key on your Mac and the letter B. So instead of using the Menu Bar to make the text bold I could have just used Command B on my keyboard. It actually invokes the command in the Menu Bar. I can use Command B again to unbold. Notice how the Format Menu flashes indicting that keyboard shortcut was activating the command in the Menu Bar. 

Most keyboard shortcuts on the Mac are simply a quick way to get to different commands here that are already available in the Menu Bar that you can access with your trackpad or mouse. The idea is if you find you are using a Menu Bar command often you may want to look at the keyboard shortcut and begin to use that instead. There are so many keyboard shortcuts in the different menus. You can see them for almost every item. It's impossible to learn them all but to increase your productivity you really only need to learn the ones for commands you use often. For commands you use less frequently it's perfectly fine and it is not going to slow you down to go to the Menu Bar the few times you need to access those. 

When you look at the different Menu Bar commands you'll see the symbols that represent the keys on your keyboard. Here for Copy you can see the Command Symbol symbol that's on the Command Key on your Keyboard. For Paste & Match style here, you're going to see three symbols. The symbol for the Option Key, the symbol for the Shift Key, and the symbol for the Command Key. Meaning that you need to hold down all three of those modifier keys and then press V to use that keyboard shortcut. 

Two other modifier keys can be seen here in the Window Menu for the Center Window command. There is the symbol for the Control Key and the symbol for the Globe or fn key. If you have an older Mac Keyboard it may just say fn and not actually have this Globe Symbol on it. So learn those five symbols to match them to the modifier keys on your keyboard. The Command Key, Option Key, Shift Key, Control Key, and the Globe or fn Key. 

So apps have keyboard shortcuts that don't have Menu Bar commands equivalents. For instance, in apps where you edit text, like Pages, you can use the Option Key then the right arrow to jump forward one word. You can use the Command Key and the right arrow to jump to the end of that line, and the Command Key and the down arrow to jump to the end of the document. It's harder to figure out these keyboards shortcuts since there is no where to really find them. But from time to time you may learn some anyway. 

Also, sometimes apps will show keyboard shortcuts for Buttons. For instance, here in Pixelmator Pro if I move my Pointer over the different modes here on the right I'll get little help indicators and it will show me keys that can be used as keyboard shortcuts. For instance, to go to the Style Controls I can press S. To go to Color Adjustments I can use A. To go to Effects I can use F. In this case no modifier key is needed. 

There are also commands that don't have anything to do with the app that you are using, but affect the entire system. For instance, if you want to see the Notification Center to the right I can use the Globe Key and N and it will bring that up and the same thing will dismiss it. Likewise, Option Command D will Unhide the Dock or hide it again. Now you won't find those commands in the Menu Bar you can find them by going to System Settings and then scrolling down on the left until you find Keyboard. Go there and then look for the Keyboard Shortcuts Button. Here you are going to find a whole list of different sets of Keyboard Shortcuts that are for the System. For instance if you want to see how you can control Mission Control with keyboard shortcuts go to Mission Control here and you'll find a whole variety of keyboard shortcuts there. Here are some for Windows and you can see those keyboard shortcuts. There are other ones in all these different categories here. Like here are the ones for ScreenShots. 

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This is also where you can go for customizing Keyboard Shortcuts. For instance, if you want to change the command for saving a picture of the screen as a file you can go to System Settings, Keyboard, click the Keyboard Shortcuts button, and go to the ScreenShots Section. Then you could double click where it shows the Keyboard Shortcut and enter your own command for that. Likewise there are Sub Slots for Keyboard Shortcuts that aren't being used. For instance under Mission Control you've got the ability to set a keyboard shortcut for turning Stage Manager On or Off but by default it is set to None. Note that there are also checkboxes that you can use to disable or enable keyboard shortcuts for the System. 

Sometimes apps give you the opportunity to set keyboard shortcuts for custom actions. For instance, for Style in Pages you can go to anyone of the styles, including ones you create, and you can go to the right arrow there and then define a keyboard shortcut using one of the F keys. Or in Final Cut Pro you can go to the Main App Menu, go to Command Sets, and customize the keyboard shortcuts used for commands throughout the app, including ones that don't have a matching item in the Menu Bar. 

Now you can also add your own custom keyboard shortcuts when there is none for a menu command. For instance, Strikethrough here in Pages doesn't have a keyboard shortcut. If I need to use that often I may want to add one. So the first thing I want to do is note the exact name of the menu item. It doesn't matter if it is under Format Font. All that matters is that it is Strikethrough. All one word. No space, like that. So now I'm going to go to System Settings and into the Keyboard Section and click the Keyboard Shortcuts Button. Go to App Shortcuts. Click the Plus Button here. Now I want to select the Application or just leave it that All Applications in anywhere that a menu with that name appears. This will be the Keyboard Shortcut that's used. Now I need to type the Menu Item exactly. So I want to make sure I get this right! That it doesn't have any extra spaces or anything. Then I click here and I want to use the keyboard shortcut combination. In this case I'm going to use Shift Control Option Command and T. Then click Done. Then Done again. 

Now I want to return to the app. Go to the menu and confirm that it is there. So I"m going to look under Format, Font and I'll see for Strikethrough and there's the new Keyboard Shortcut. If you don't see it there it's not going to work. You probably either typed the name incorrectly, assigned it to the incorrect app, or perhaps it was already being used by some other command. So, try again. But now that it is there I can go and use this keyboard shortcut instead of the Menu Bar in the future. 

Now a lot of Mac users love keyboard shortcuts and love to learn as many as they can to be more productive. But, you don't need to use them. There are also Mac users that just like to use the mouse and trackpad and the Menu Bar to click, to point, to drag things around and find that to be more efficient because you don't need to remember all of these different commands. The idea here is to use them in a way that makes sense to you. You may find that using the Menu Bar works most of the time and you only really need to learn keyboard shortcuts for the action you perform very frequently. If you do want to learn more keyboard shortcuts I've got a free printable PDF that you can download and print out that could help you. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.