The F-Keys and Special Features Keys on the Mac Keyboard

Learn how to use the keys on the top row of your Mac keyboard. You can use them to send F1, F2, and other F-Keys to the app you are currently using, or you can use them to control special features like screen brightness and volume. Learn how to toggle which requires the FN key and which does not.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using the keys along the top of your Mac's keyboard. 
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Now some Macs have the Touch Bar at the top. That's the little narrow touch screen and of course that can be customized in a number of ways. I'm only dealing with here the Macs that have physical keys along the top row. Now if you look at the top of your Mac keyboard you should see a row of keys that have special symbols at the top and F1, F2, F3, and so on under that. These are called the Function Keys or F keys. They actually do two separate things. Much like the rest of the keys on your keyboard. For instance the A key, if you press it by itself will type a lower case a. But if you hold the modifier key, Shift, and then type A you get an upper case A. They keys at the top of your keyboard are the same except instead of using the Shift key you use the fn or Globe key that's on your keyboard. Older Mac keyboards have an fn key. Newer Mac Keyboards have a key that has both fn and a Globe symbol on it. What the keys on the top of your keyboard do depends on whether you are holding that modifier key down. 
For instance, without holding the fn key down pressing the first one may send a F1 to your Mac. But with the fn key pressed down you may be sending the trigger to lower the screen brightness. These two different things are called either Functions, F1, F2, F3, are functions. These are also called just F keys or they are special feature's keys which are things like screen brightness, volume control, playback controls, and others. 
Now unlike the Shift key, which always takes a lower case letter and makes it an upper case letter, the fn key toggles these function keys one way or the other. There is a setting for this. In macOS Ventura it moved to a new location. It is in System Settings and if you go to Keyboard look for the button Keyboard Shortcuts. Click that and then in the list here on the left there is Function Keys. Click that and you'll see the one setting there is to Toggle whether the F1, F2, etc keys are used as standard function keys or whether they are used as Special Feature keys. Whichever way you have this toggled, holding the fn key will do the opposite. So if I leave it On here then pressing F1 will produce an F1. What does F1 do? Well that depends on which app you are using. F1, F2, and F3 and all those F keys signals can be used as keyboard shortcuts in various apps. Different apps use them in different ways. Some apps won't use them at all. For instance, here in Pages if I go to the Format sidebar and I look at Styles I can go to a Style, select this, and then set a shortcut for that key. So I can set this Subtitle Style to be F7. You'll see it appear there. Now in Pages here I can select some text. I can press F7 and quickly change to that style. 
So now since I have that switched turned On I need to use the fn or Globe key to access the Special Features. Where you find that key depends on which keyboard you have. On smaller Mac keyboards it is in a very convenient location. The bottom left hand corner. But on the extended keyboard, for some reason Apple still has it at the top right, to the right of the Delete key. Which isn't very convenient when you want to use it a lot. If I press and hold that key down and press F1 that will mean screen brightness lowered. F2 is screen brightness increased. F10 is Mute. F11 is volume down and F12 is volume up.
Now if I find I rarely ever use the Function key, but use Special Features keys like adjusting the volume all the time, then I may want to go into System Settings and change this setting so that I can more easily access those Special Features. So now with this turned Off I can adjust the brightness by just pressing those keys. Adjust the volume by just pressing those keys. No modifier key is needed at all. If I ever do want to type F1 or F7 or something I can still hold the fn or Globe key down to do that. So it is really a matter of personal preference as to whether you want this setting turned On or Off. I think that users have a lot of Pro apps that have tons of keyboard shortcuts and make a lot of use of those function keys probably want this On so they can type F1, F2, F3 and so on very easily and then have to hold down the fn key when they want to adjust volume or screen brightness. But if you don't use apps that make use of those F keys then you may want to have this turned Off so you have easy access to all those special functions. 
Now the Special Functions for F3, F4, F5, and F6 vary depending upon which Mac you have. For instance on my brand new MacBook Air the special feature for the F4 key is Spotlight. But on my older extended keyboard F4 is Launchpad. So if I press F4 here it brings up Launchpad. So you have to look at your Mac's keyboard to see exactly what those keys do. Also I found that sometimes if you have this switch turned On you can't access those special features at all. For instance if I have this toggled On on my new MacBook Air in macOS Ventura and I hold the fn or Globe key down and then press F3, F4, F5, or F6 none of the special features actually work. But if I turn this Off and I use those keys without the fn or Globe key then all of the special features for those four keys will work just fine. 
Keep in mind all of those things have alternative keyboard shortcuts as well. For instance if I go to Launchpad & Dock here you see I can set a keyboard shortcut for Show Launchpad. If I go to Mission Control the default is Control Up Arrow but I can modify that. Do Not Disturb On & Off can be set to any keyboard shortcut you want as well. For Spotlight the default is Command Space. Now you can actually use the F key as shortcuts too. So a lot of times you can set the same key to do the same thing whether or not you're holding down the fn key. So, for instance, with this turned On if I press the F4 key on my Mac extended keyboard it does nothing. Fn and that key will bring up Launchpad. But I could go to Launchpad & Dock here and then select Show Launchpad. Turn it On and I'm going to set the key to F4. So now I get Show Launchpad when I hold fn and F4 down as a special feature function. But I also get Launchpad when I just press F4 by itself. 
If you can't remember which way you have that switch toggled and you don't want to check right now, you just want to actually do the function, then you can just try pressing that key, like press F4 and see if it does the Special Feature indicated on your keyboard. If it doesn't then hold the fn or Globe key down and Press F4.
Now one good reason to have this turned On is that you can use the F key as keyboard shortcuts all by themselves. Which is different than letter keys. Letter keys need a modifier key to be used as a keyboard shortcut. For instance, if I go into App Shortcuts here and I add a keyboard shortcut, say I want to have easy access to using the Superscript Menu item in Pages. So I set this up like that. The keyboard shortcut could be set to say Command Option S but I couldn't set it to just S. However, I can set it to something like F7 all by itself. Just one key to press. But in addition to that you could also use modifier keys. So I could use F7 as Superscript but maybe Command F7 as Subscript. 
So there's a look at using the keys along the top of your Mac's keyboard. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 4 Responses to “The F-Keys and Special Features Keys on the Mac Keyboard”

nick

4 months ago

Gary, I have a Mac extended keyboard and have the Function Keys option turned on. All the features for the keys work as they should except the brightness keys do not work. I need to specify that I have a Mac Mini with a non-Mac monitor. Would that be the reason why brightness function key does not work? Btw I tried turning the function keys option off, but the result is the same. Thx

Gary Rosenzweig

Nick: A Mac mini or Mac Studio would use an external display and the brightness would be controlled by the screen's controls, not the system. If you can't adjust them in System Settings, Display, then the keys are just a shortcut to that.

Steve F

2 months ago

Watched this video, but my problem is that while I have ˆD (control/D) for dictionary, it deletes. I went to settings/keyboard/keyboard shortcuts and checked every option on the left to look at the shortcut key - none show the ˆD assigned to "delete." Is there a way to see EVERY assigned shortcut key so I can change the conflicting keys? Thanks.

Steve: Not sure what you mean by having Control+D assigned to Dictionary. Do you mean in System Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, Services? I wouldn't use Control+D for that. That is something used at a lower system level in text editors for delete as you have found out. Pick something else.

The F-Keys and Special Features Keys on the Mac Keyboard

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