Top 10 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's countdown the Top Ten keyboard shortcuts for the Mac. 

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So keyboard shortcuts are more useful than others. If you had to make a list of keyboard shortcuts which ones would be in the Top Ten. How would you even rank them? Well, I came up with a way. Here's my methodology. First I started with my own keyboard shortcuts.pdf. I have been maintaining this for years updating it with each version of macOS. So I figured if anything was going to make the Top Ten it was going to be listed here. If you want to get your own copy of that it is available for free at MacMost.com. You can see it right here on the front page. So then I went through the list and pulled out the ones that I thought had a chance of being in the Top Ten. As it turns out I came up with 16 good options. So when trying to think about how to rank them I looked to the world of sports. They do it with playoff brackets. So I did the same thing but with keyboard shortcuts. 

In Numbers I built a special spreadsheet that acts as a bracket here. I listed all the keyboard shortcuts I wanted to include and had them randomly put into the outside brackets. Then I was able to use checkboxes to figure out which ones advanced to the next round. I would do that until I had a champion. When it was done I had points assigned based on how far each shortcut got in the competition. Now that would only tell me the top 2 and then there would be a bunch of ties after that. So what I did is I randomized the outer brackets again and ran through the competition over and over and over and then added all the points up until I had a clear Top Ten list. I used various criteria in determining who won any given match. Usually how useful how the keyboard shortcut was, whether there were other ways to do it, how often people use it, how well it is known. That kind of thing. Now you may agree or disagree with my result. It's all very subjective and it is really just a bit of fun. Let me know how you think this turned out in the comments below. 

So I'm going to do more than just read off the Top Ten. I'm going to show you some tips and tricks for each keyboard shortcut as we go along. 

 So at #10 comes Command i. So Command i we usually use in the Finder when we select a file. Go to File and then Get Info. It is just Command i and you get this window here that gives you all this additional information about the file and you can usually adjust things as well. Like Tags here or Add Comments. You can also use Command i in other apps. Like, for instance, in Preview here I have an image open and Command i will bring up the Info window which gives me more information about the photo and I can even get metadata from inside the Photo File. Here in QuickTime Player Command i also brings up more information about the video I have open.

One tip is that you could also use the Option key here to modify this. So you can see File, Get Info is Command i. But if I hold down Option it is showing Inspector. Inspector is the same as Get Info Window. So Command Option i except that it always floats on top and it will stay there and show you information for whatever you have selected. So you don't have to open new Get Info windows to see the information for other files. Plus you can select multiple files and it will give you totals, like the total size for all those files. 

At #9 we have Command A. I use this one all the time. It's an easy way to select All. You'll find it under Edit, Select All right there. So I can do Command A and it selects all the text in this document. So now I can hit the Delete key to delete it all or I can change a Style, like maybe change the Font for everything. I don't have to select by dragging. You can also use it in other places, like in the Finder here. I can do Command A and it selects all the files in the current window. In Keynote I can select one item at a time or I can hold Shift or Command to select multiple things. But if I do Command A it just selects all of these items. So I can clear this slide out easily with Delete or I can drag and all the items selected will move together. 

At #8 we have Command H for Hide. Command H is found in the Application Menu here and it is hide and hides what application is currently showing. So Command H is a quick way to get rid of all of the app windows for an app. In this case Reminders just has one window open so Command H will do that. Another Command H gets rid of Notes. You can bring back apps just by relaunching them or using the App Switcher since they are still running. So I can easily bring something back. It's an alternative to using Minimize which puts this into the Dock. 

At #7 we've got fn or the Globe key and e which brings up the Emoji & Special Characters Viewer. Now this is the new version of the shortcut. The old version, which still works exactly the same, is Control Command Space. In reality I still use Control Command Space all the time. But both of these keyboard shortcuts do the same thing and bring up the Special Character Viewer. As soon as you get there you are already in Search mode. So if you're looking for a particular emoji you can just start typing and it will bring up anything that matches. There is a lot more than just emoji here as well. For instance, you can type Flag for a field of flags or the name of a country to go right to that flag. You can type the name of a math symbol to get other types of symbols like this. It is basically a way to get any special character in any app where you type text. 

At #6 we have Command V which of course is Paste. Paste really is nothing without Copy which we are going to get to later as you can probably guess. So assuming that you have copied something, like this, you can go and paste it elsewhere with Command V or Edit Paste. You can also do that across apps. A handy modification of this is being able to paste but without the text styling. So, for instance, say I had some text where there was a bunch of stuff that was bold and maybe some stuff that had different colors. If I selected that, Copy, and then went to another app and pasted you can see how it keeps all that styling. But if I wanted to just paste plain text you can see under Edit there is also Paste & Match Style which is Option Shift Command V in the case of Mail. Other apps sometimes have it slightly differently. So now I can paste here and you can see it just used the style that I was already typing with in this message. Paste can also be used to make a Copy of a file. So let me copy a file here with Command C. I'll go to another location and let's say I want to Paste a copy of that file. You can see here under Edit, Paste Item is Command V. If I hold the Option key down it changes to Move Item. So it would remove it from its original location and put it here. So I'm just going to Paste a copy with Command V and I get a Copy of the file, the original is still where it was before. So it is a handy way to Copy or Move files around without dragging and dropping. 

At #5 we have Command F. You can use Command F here in the Finder to find files. As soon as you do that you get all the Search options right here, something you don't normally get if say you were just clicking on this magnifying glass icon there to start a search. Using Command F in the Finder is also a better way to start searching for files other than using Spotlight because Spotlight searches for all sorts of other things in other places as well. If you know you want a file just go to a Finder window and use Command F. But of course you can also use Command F in documents and you can search for words with that. A really handy place to use Command F is on a webpage. A lot of people don't realize that when you get to a long webpage like this and you want to look up information you can do Command F and search for words on the Page to quickly find them in long lists of data or in lots of text.

At #4 is the QuickLook shortcut which is just the Spacebar. But alternatively it is also Command Y. Either one brings up the QuickLook window and is a great way to preview files. You can see how easily I can view this image file here to determine if it is what I want. But I could also view PDF's. I could also view text files. I can even view Numbers' Files. Look at how QuickLook even allows me to look at the different sheets inside this Numbers document. If you select multiple files in the Finder and hit Space you can use the Arrow keys or these buttons here at the top to flip through the items you've selected. You could also click up here and go into a thumbnail view. Plus QuickLook allows you to select one item, go into QuickLook and then you can use the arrow keys still to move around in the Finder. So down arrow will take me to the next file and notice how the QuickLook window stays there as I move through the files. Another thing you can do is modify this with the Option Key. So Option and Space will show you QuickLook but in Full Screen Mode. 

So now we're at the top three keyboard shortcuts.

At #3 we've got the keyboard shortcut that maybe the first one that most people ever learned. That's Command C for Copy. Of course we've already looked at this when we talked about Command V for Paste. Command C is the first step. So you can select some text, say in a document, and use Command C which is equivalent to Edit, Copy. This places what ever you've selected into the Clipboard. So now you can Paste it somewhere else. But it works in many more places than just text. For instance you can select an element here in Keynote, Copy and then Paste, to paste a copy of it either here or on another slide or maybe even in another app. I can go to Mail here after having copied that image in Keynote and Paste and that image will appear even with the border from Keynote inside the Mail message. 

Here's a trick a lot of people don't know. If you go in the Finder to the Edit Menu. The Edit Menu for the Finder has Show Clipboard. Bring that up and you get a little window that shows you the contents of the Clipboard, whether it is text, an image, or something else. Now it even gives you some information about what type of item this is. 

Now #2. That is going to be Command Space for Spotlight. A lot of people love this shortcut because there is so much you can do with it. You, of course, can use this to search for files. You get access to the file that you want. But you could also use it for so many other things. For instance, if you search for just a regular term, like this, you may get files, you may get links to start web searches here, you'll get dictionary definitions, you'll get documents that have that word inside the document, you get email messages, you'll get photos, you'll get results from the Music App, you'll get images on the web, other types of documents, bookmarks, all sorts of things. You can control exactly what shows up in Spotlight by going to System Settings and then go to Siri & Spotlight. Then under Spotlight you'll see all the different kinds of results. You can turn some of these Off if you don't find them useful. I can also do all sorts of other things in Spotlight. For instance, you can do quick math equations like that and you can even use parentheses to do more complex things than you could usually do on the calculator. You can do currency conversions like this. You can do Unit conversions like this. You can search for weather information like that. Get more. You can get Flight information right inside of Spotlight. There is so much you can do in Spotlight. 

Now that brings us to the #1 keyboard shortcut for the Mac. That is going to be a shortcut that has been around since almost the very beginning. It's one of the most important things and yet still today some people don't use it to its fullest. That's Command Z for Undo. So, for course, Command Z will allow you to easily undo a change. For instance if I delete this paragraph here and I realize that was a mistake Command Z will Undo. You usually find this in the Edit Menu right at the very top. But you can do more than just one step. I can delete this word here, these words here, these words here, and these words here and then Undo each one of those by using Command Z multiple times. That works in almost any app. So here in Keynote I can move this image here. I can delete this text here and I can change this text here and I can Undo each one of those with Command Z, Command Z, Command Z. You can even Undo things in the Finder. For instance I can Delete a file and then Command Z to put it back. I can do the same thing by Rename a file. Command Z will Undo that. So I can move this file. I can delete this file, and I can rename this file and then Command Z, Command Z, and Command Z will reverse all of that.

Still today I get a lot of questions with somebody saying I made a mistake. I deleted something I shouldn't have, I changed something I shouldn't have and I wasn't able to find a way to get that back. But when I ask them, well did you try Command Z they didn't realize that they could do that in that situation. Thinking that it really only applied, say, when you were editing text or something like that. So Command Z is the big winner. Job well done or Undone as the case may be. I think we all wish we had Command Z in real life as well as on our Mac. So there is my list of the Top Ten keyboard shortcuts on the Mac. Hope you found this entertaining as well as useful. Thanks for watching.