The Obvious Mac Keyboard Shortcut That You May Not Be Using

Many Mac users use keyboard shortcuts all the time, but overlook an obvious and useful one. Learn how to jump to items in long lists and find things even when there is no way to search.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you a simple but useful keyboard shortcut that even some experts don't know about.
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So if you like keyboard shortcuts here's something a little bit different. A keyboard shortcut that a lot of people overlook. Some people know it's there but forget to use it and it's so useful. 
When you think of keyboard shortcuts you probably think of things like Command C for Copy, Command Q for Quit, or Control Command F to go into full screen mode. But another important keyboard shortcut is to simply click a letter. Doing this will save you a lot of time when searching for something in a list. My first example is the Finder. Here I have my documents folder. There's a long lists of folders and files here. One way to jump right to something is to press the key that corresponds to the first letter. So, for instance, if I want to go to the folder marked Personal here instead of clicking on it with the mouse I can use the P key. It jumps right to it. 
Now let's say I want to go and refine it even more. I want to go to the Pics folder. I can type pi and it will jump right to that folder. After about a second pause I could try another key. So I can type d to go to Docs, t to jump down to Temp, v to jump down to video diary. So if you want to type more than one character to find a specific item you need to type them pretty quickly.
This even works in other modes here in the Finder. So I can to Icon View here and typing d will still take me to the Docs folder and v to my video diary folder. It gets a little confusing because they're not necessarily in alphabetical order here. But pressing the key will act like they are and find the appropriate folder.
Here's another place where you could use this. This is a Songs list in the Music app. I can press a key to jump right down to the first song with that letter in its name. Or I can type multiple letters to jump right down to that song. It comes in really handy when you need to specify a font. Typically we have very long font lists. So I'll click here for a font and if I want to jump right to Verdana I can type v and it will jump right down to the v's.
It even works here in Mail. You could see I've got different subjects here. They're not in alphabetical order certainly. But if I type w it'll jump to the first email with a subject line that starts with w. If I type r it'll go to the first one with the r in its subject. It also works in the Menu Bar. So I could click here to bring up a menu. Then I could press a letter like m to jump to the first menu item that starts with that letter. It even works in Pulldown or Popup menus. So I could go File, Export and when I click on the Format you could see I have multiple items here. But if I use the letter p it will jump right to the first item with that name. then I could hit Return to use it.
Now this works very well with situations where you're already using the keyboard. For instance you may use the keyboard shortcut O to open a file. Then you get a file dialogue and now you can press keys to actually pick the file that you want rather than having to take your hand off the keyboard, go to the trackpad or mouse, and select a file from the list. It's especially useful when the list is huge like I showed with fonts or songs in the Music app.

Comments: 11 Responses to “The Obvious Mac Keyboard Shortcut That You May Not Be Using”

Corey D

5 years ago

Hi.. I have a Mac extended keyboard which includes F keys # F13-F19. What is the purpose of those keys? Can I assign auto-text or commands to those keys which can be used in all applications? For example, I have to type out the date frequently in the format of MM-DD-YYYY. Can I just assign F13 to enter today's date? Just trying to find ways to work smarter, not harder. Thanks in advance!

Gary Rosenzweig

Corey: For apps to use them, for you to use them. Some apps may have defaults for those keys. Usually pretty high-end pro apps or games. Otherwise, you can use them when you create keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences, or using the keyboard assignment settings in some apps (Photoshop, for instance). To have it type out the date, the app you are using needs to have that function. In Pages there is Insert, Date & Time. You could map F13 to that if you liked in System Preferences.

Gene

Incredible! You are Mac user rock star!

Dave Nichols

Gary.. thanks, simple but good. Reminds me, I have never been able to program a shortcut for the "Enter" key on the left hand side of the keyboard... am I missing something obvious??
Keep 'em coming.. and thanks

Dave: The "Enter" key on the left? I have no idea what you mean by that.

Bart

Thank you Gary. I have had Macs for ten years and this is a shortcut I never knew about.

DAN

Amazing, quick, and totally new to me. Why didn't anyone else come up with this info years ago. Gary, totally impressed as ever. Really appreciate your warm, reassuring voice and vocal cadence, very professional, but friendly. Makes one want to listen to your videos on their own, let alone their content. Really enjoying your videos.

Ros Sharp

Thanks for another very helpful video, Gary, but...
I followed this with no trouble until the example , Popup menus
I opened a jpg image in Preview, went to File>format and clicked on the Format pop-up menu.
I then typed h to select HEIC, but it was JPEG that remained highlighted.
Can you suggest a reason?

Ros: I tried it and it worked for me. Maybe your cursor moved and overrode the key press?

Annie

Is there a shortcut that I can use in word processing where I can delete from Left to right?

Annie: FN+delete

Comments Closed.

The Obvious Mac Keyboard Shortcut That You May Not Be Using

Comments: 11 Responses to “The Obvious Mac Keyboard Shortcut That You May Not Be Using”

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