Commands at your fingertips
Via keyboard, mouse or trackpad, there are cleverer ways to do things
While we value our touch–scrolling Magic Mice and gesture– sensing Magic Trackpads, the frankly not–particularly Magic Keyboard is often the fastest way to activate commands. Even as the Mac’s legendary role as cursor–armed slayer of the green–screen command line slips into the mists of time, there’s still a little bit of an aversion, chez Cupertino, to keyboard navigation. But if you know your way around, with a few tweaks you can invoke many of the commands that you need without having to point a little arrow at them.
1 KEEP TABS WITH TAB
You probably use Tab to move between text fields. You may know you can use it to switch the blue outline between buttons in a dialog box, then press Space to click (Return selects the solid blue button regardless). You may have noticed pressing Tab in the Finder highlights the next file in alphabetical order, even if they’re not shown in that order. Witchcraft! But it can do more.
In System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, select “Use keyboard navigation” to move focus between controls (previously Full Keyboard Access). You can now use Tab to scoot your blue box around most of the UI in any window. Hit Space to click the outlined item. Safari has a similar tweak for tabbing within web pages in Safari > Preferences > General > Accessibility. Sadly, Big Sur’s Control Center and widgets can neither be invoked with key shortcuts, nor do they respond to Tab.
2 PULL FOCUS
In System Preferences > Keyboard, go into Shortcuts and select Keyboard on the left. As well as key shortcuts to turn Tab navigation on and off, you’ll find combos to “move focus” to various different user interface areas. You probably already use Cmd+`, which switches you to the next window within an app. Check out the other options, including Ctrl+F3, which moves focus to the Dock, showing it if it was hidden. Unlike with the more familiar Cmd+Opt+D shortcut, you can then use the left and right cursor arrows to select a Dock item and press Return to launch it, or the up arrow to show its contextual menu.
These shortcuts use function keys by default, but if that’s not convenient (hi, Touch Bar owners!) just click the combo shown and press whatever keys you prefer to use. You’re warned if the same shortcut is already assigned elsewhere.
3 MENU MANIPULATIONS
Still in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Keyboard, note that Ctrl+F2 moves focus to the menu bar. This highlights the Apple menu; you can then use the right and left arrow keys to select a command in any menu, and hit Return (or Space) to invoke it. If you remember the name of a command rather than where it is in the menus, there’s an easier way: press Cmd+Shift+/ (effectively Cmd+?) to go to the Help menu’s search box, then start typing any menu item that exists in this app. Press the down arrow to pop it open, then Return (not Space) to invoke it. From the Apple menu, you can only move through the menus with text titles; you should be able to move focus to the menu bar icons at the right using Ctrl+F8 (move focus to status menus), but this didn’t work properly for us, perhaps due to a glitch in the new way these icons are handled.
4 SHORTCUT SHENANIGANS
Still in the Shortcuts tab in System Preferences > Keyboard, select App Shortcuts on the left, and roll up your sleeves. By clicking +, you can add a keyboard shortcut for any menu item in any app (or in menus that exist across apps). The only tricky part is that you have to type the correct name of the command; there’s no way of cutting and pasting it, and if it’s not exact, it won’t work. Then click in the box to type your chosen key combo. Oh, wait, there’s another tricky part: you’ll get no indication if your shortcut clashes with another, whether defined here or elsewhere. So, um, watch out for that. Note that the shortcut will only work while the relevant app is open and has focus. Some apps have their own shortcut options, usually found in Preferences or on the application menu, which may also cover operations that aren’t menu items.
5 JUST YOUR TYPE
In System Preferences > Keyboard > Text, as well as setting autocorrect options, you can click + and enter anything you like in the Replace and With columns to create text shortcuts. In Apple apps and most others, whenever you type anything found under Replace, macOS will substitute what’s under With. For example, if you often need to type fractions, omitted from Apple’s standard keyboard modifiers, just replace “1/2” with ½ (which you can find in the Emoji & Symbols picker — see p20) and so on. If you can never remember how to type © because you’re not as high as the Apple employee who assigned it to Option+G, just Replace (c):. The With field will accept a substantial amount of text, which you can paste in, so you could also set up boilerplate paragraphs. To avoid hilarity, make sure you only replace phrases that you wouldn’t otherwise type.
6 CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
As we have mentioned, the Input menu bar item (System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > Show input menu in menu bar) gives quick access to two floating windows, both redesigned in macOS Catalina. Emoji & Symbols shows a categorized list of special characters; you can click the icon at the top–right to switch to a bigger Character Viewer, and this setting is remembered. It’s easier to invoke Emoji & Symbols with Ctrl+Cmd+Space. If you’re currently typing, it pops up at the text cursor position; click a character to type it or drag from floating window, but you can’t cut and paste. There’s no shortcut to open the Keyboard Viewer (also known as the Accessibility Keyboard), but you can use the minus button at the top–left to keep it open as a floating blob, or adjust its size and opacity from the menu icon at the top–right.
7 WATCH MY FINGERS
Input devices are set up in the Trackpad or Mouse pane of System Preferences, with Trackpad showing a larger number of options thanks to its multi–touch gesture sensing ability. Under Point & Click, if you find the Magic Trackpad doesn’t always recognize your attempts at a two–finger right–click, you can set an imaginary button in a corner. You can also opt for a one–finger tap to count as a click, rather than having to press down on the surface; or if you often find you press too hard and accidentally trigger a Force Click response, such as Quick Look, you can turn this off. You can also set how hard a click is required, and adjust the tracking speed. With either input device, tracking is not linear, but accelerates as you move your finger faster; this can’t be adjusted.
Under Scroll and Zoom, you can opt for Natural scrolling (content follows your finger) or traditional (scroll bar follows your finger). In System Preferences > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Mouse &
Trackpad, you can set double– click speed and whether your MacBook’s built–in trackpad is ignored when using a mouse, a handy option to avoid unintentional swipes. Click Trackpad Options to set scroll speed and inertia (where fast scrolling slows to a stop), and enable dragging without holding down — a feature not available in Mouse Options.
This is also the place to set the spring–loading delay: how long macOS waits while you hover a dragged item over a folder in the Finder before popping it open to show its contents. If you deselect this item, folders won’t pop open at all, but you can still drag and drop items into them.
MEANINGFUL GESTURES
For both Trackpad and Mouse, there are More Gestures tabs where you can find out about additional gestures that you might not have known existed and turn them on and off. There are far more for the Magic Trackpad than the Magic Mouse, one reason why even desktop Mac users might want to invest $129. But mousers can use a two–finger swipe to switch between Spaces, or full– screen apps, and a two–finger tap to enter Mission Control — both different from the equivalent trackpad gestures, just to keep you on your toes. If you really, really like gestures, consider BetterTouchTool (around $8.50 at folivora.ai), a comprehensive utility that lets you assign all sorts of input triggers to all sorts of commands. There’s even a free BTT Remote Control iOS app to make your Mac respond to your iPhone or iPad’s touchscreen.
PUT ON A FUNCTION
Function keys either perform shortcuts assigned (in macOS or in apps) to F1, F2 and so on, or system functions that may also be printed on them, like adjusting brightness. The latter is the default; holding Fn makes them work as F keys. To use F keys by default, go to System Preferences > Keyboard and select Use F1, F2, etc keys as standard function keys.
If your Mac has a Touch Bar, it should show F keys when you hold Fn. If not, choose the option in this same pane for “Press and hold Fn key to.” To show the alternative functions, tap the chevron at the left of the Control Strip at the right of the Touch Bar. You can show this by default – select “Touch bar shows Expanded Control Strip” – but you won’t get bespoke controls within apps; or you can substitute it for “Press and hold Fn key to,” but then you can’t get F keys. Sigh.
THE GREAT DICTATOR
Tired of typing? Tap the Fn key twice, while you have an active text cursor almost anywhere you can enter text, and a little mic will pop up. This key shortcut is controlled from System Prefs > Keyboard > Dictation, where you can also set what language macOS should assume you’re going to ramble in. Click the pop–up menu below the mic symbol on the left here to choose whether to use your Mac’s internal mic or one that’s connected, or just leave it on Automatic. The mic icon’s fill, both here and in the contextual pop–up, shows a live level, which should wiggle up and down a bit if it’s working. Your words are transcribed with generally reasonable accuracy. See support.apple.com/en-us/guide/ mac-help/mh40584/mac for tips to enter punctuation and so forth.