OS X keyboard shortcuts! Get yer shortcuts here!
Here are some of my favorites, plus links to rocking good lists of keyboard shortcuts for the Mac. Also, a quick and dirty tutorial on how to enable and disable your own (kewl) keyboard shortcuts.
Apple’s listing of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts “only” offers 99 listings. Then there’s Dan Frakes (from Mac OS X Power Tools) who manages to out about the same number.
For my money, however, the pick o’ the litter of OS X keyboard compendiums ( ∧ + ⌘ + D, look up in dictionary) of shortcut knowledge is Dan Rodney (instructor – designer, all around nice guy)’s Mac Central, because it’s more than a dumb text listing (ie collapsible headers, nice layout, symbol legend) and it’s regularly updated.
Create your own keyboard shortcuts!
When it comes to compendiums of OS X keyboard shortcuts, it always seems I’m always one short and a day late.
But, did you know that any pull-down menu command in an application can be turned into a keyboard shortcut? For example, OS X’s Preview is a fairly capable little image viewing and editing application—I use it a lot.
It’s even more useful now that I’ve added a keyboard shortcut for “Adjust Size…” ( ⌘ + ⌥ + I ), which allows me to keep my hands on keyboard and quickly, easily resize an image.
Check the tutorial here (update for Snow Leopard 9/04/09).
FYI—shortcut used to grab the image at the right is ⌘ + ∧ + ⇧ + 4 (capture to clipboard)
Reassigning a shortcut
How do you get rid of a keyboard shortcut that you don’t want? For those of us who use more than one language, being able to ⌘ + spacebar (ie scroll one at a time) through the input menu is super useful.
However, the default configuration of OS X uses that combination to display the Spotlight search field.
And, enable ⌘ + spacebar for use with the input menu:
If you’re looking for even more esoteric applications of the keyboard shortcut, then you need to visit Mac OS X Hints. Whether you need a shortcut to toggle Airport on and off or an X11 shortcut to launch GIMP—it’s in there.
Got a favorite keyboard shortcut? Looking for one? Let us know below…
Related Posts:
