Joey Aghion

Half a Mind

by Joey Aghion

Keyboard shortcuts on a Mac

I’ve been working exclusively on Macs for a while now, but am in the process of configuring my first brand-new machine. Sadly, I’m still not as fluid with Mac OSX keyboard shortcuts as I was on Windows. As a result, I’m much more mouse-dependent (and so slower) on the Mac. That ends now.

Luckily, Command+Tab for switching among applications works similarly to Windows’ Alt+Tab. Command-` (back-tick) usually allows you to switch between windows of a single application, but the occasional application uses Ctrl+Tab (like Windows) instead.

Fn+F9 will show you (and, again, allow you to switch between) all open windows.

Command+M will minimize the current window to the dock, although that’s hardly ever useful to me since one of the first customizations I make to a machine is usually to Automatically hide and show the Dock (_System Preferences_ > Dock).

Want to maximize a window the way you might on Windows? Not so fast. The green plus-sign (+) button looks like it might maximize the window, but in fact it chooses a best-fit based on the window’s content. I don’t know of a keyboard shortcut for triggering this effect, but the following post from Simon Dorfman provided an adequate solution:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051227001809626

Adapted slightly:

  1. Go to System Preferences > Universal Access and check Enable access for assistive devices

  2. Paste the following script into a file called Maximize.scpt in your ~/Library/Scripts directory:

    tell application “System Events” set FrontApplication to (get name of every process whose frontmost is true) as string tell process FrontApplication click button 2 of window 1 end tell end tell

  3. Download and install Quiksilver: http://quicksilver.en.softonic.com/mac

  4. Open Quiksilver triggers (Ctrl+Space to open Quiksilver, then Command-’ to open triggers)

  5. Add a HotKey pointing to your Maximize.scpt script, and assign it a keystroke (e.g., Ctrl+Option+Z)

Now, your custom keystroke should toggle between window sizes the way clicking the green + button would.

On Windows, hitting the Alt key to move focus to the menu bar is a convenient fall-back if you don’t know the shortcut for a particular function. On Macs, hitting Ctrl+fn+F2 does the same. (Note that this applies to the laptop-sized keyboards… full-sized ones probably don’t require the fn.)

One final time-saver: Under Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, I updated the Full Keyboard Access setting from Text boxes and lists only to All controls. This way, tabbing between form fields selects radio buttons and checkboxes in addition to the usual text fields.

More shortcuts available at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343. Learn one a day!