It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts compared to all other operating systems. There absolutely has been some people there who deeply care and think long and hard about how experts use their systems even if the actual main company doesn't care so much about that segment anymore.
Everything just makes sense logically and mnemonically like using shift to invert actions like cmd+z and cmd+shift+z rather than having ctrl+z and ctrl+y for undo/redo.
Then add to this the ability to rebind any shortcuts in any app at an OS level. It's a little frustrating because I'm trying to move my computing away from Apple because I'm no longer convinced they care about Macs in the long term but just really wish either Microsoft would have the guts to throw a lot of their legacy out and fix all this stuff or that there were some way to actually achieve this level of coherence across the whole system on Linux.
> It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts compared to all other operating systems.
I agree with your other points (including easier customizability), but have to completely disagree with this quoted sentence.
In my experience of using macOS/OS X/Mac OS X as well as Windows and Linux, macOS is one OS where a user cannot avoid using the mouse or trackpad!
On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard. The same on a Mac would be frustrating because keyboard navigation, especially for menus, is cumbersome. There are many Apple apps that cannot be completely controlled just using the keyboard either. There are many UI controls (including in dialogs) that just need a mouse or keyboard. When I find these instances, for me it's like death by a thousand paper cuts (note: I do have preferences set to navigate through all controls when hitting Tab).
If you disagree with my assessment, please try this using only the keyboard (no mouse or trackpad) and see how cumbersome it is (not to mention inconsistent in certain ways with the rest of the system too):
* Open System Preferences
* Open the Keyboard settings (just an example)
* Navigate from one tab to another within the settings
Of course, I'd like to know how something like this can be done faster using the keyboard.
On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard.
It's also far more discoverable --- if you press Alt, accidentally or otherwise, the menu highlights and you can immediately use the arrow keys to navigate it. The underlined letters (sadly missing by default in later Windows versions) also make things more obvious.
In just about every other graphical file explorer I've ever used, including the DOS ones, Enter opens the selected item. In the Mac Finder, it's Command-O. Yes, I get the fact that it's mnemonic with the others in that list, but it's completely contrary to the customary and rapidly learned behaviour of navigating using the arrow keys and Enter ---which is located very close to the arrow keys, and requires only one hand to operate easily.
I do actually agree with you in general, felt Windows was easier to navigate with the keyboard - especially menus - but that specific one can be done reasonably easily as long you've enabled "Use keyboard navigation..." in Keyboard preferences > Shortcuts:
1. Cmd-space to get Spotlight, "pref" to match System Preferences (on my machine at least), Enter
2. Search is auto highlighted so type "keyb", down arrow, Enter
3. Tab to focus on tab bar, left/right arrow key to move between tabs (this one is a bit buggy, seems the "Text" tab steals the focus so you have to shift-tab back to the tab bar)
As a counterpoint, at least on a Mac, when I’m using the keyboard I can keep my hands near the home row. I can fire up a text editor or IDE and write a bunch of code without moving my hands too much.
On Windows, I am constantly moving my right hand over to the INS/DEL/HOME/END/PGUP/PGDN block, because those keys are essential for really simple tasks like moving the cursor to the beginning of the line. And worse yet, I constantly miss the mark and move the cursor to some other part of the document, and have to find my way back again. I find it extremely frustrating.
On a Mac, I can ctrl-a to move to the beginning of a line, ctrl-e to move to the end. Nearly anywhere. Losing that convenience is super frustrating.
I was a heavy keyboard shortcut user on Windows – since Windows 3.1 days – which I believed was designed with mouse being an optional user interface device. Microsoft continued to bring ahead many of the keyboard shortcuts with Win95, XP and beyond.
When I switched to Mac, I was surprised to find how limited Mac keyboard shortcuts are, even till this day. For instance, on Windows one can resize windows with keyboard alone, but not possible, as far as I'm aware, on a Mac.
Not only is it lacking, Apple has also been dropping support for some keyboard shortcuts as well, e.g. you used to be able to put a Mac to sleep with Option+Command+Eject, with the latest TouchID MacBook Pro, Eject button is no longer there and the replacement shortcut with the power button is also not working on TouchID power button.
>There are many UI controls (including in dialogs) that just need a mouse or keyboard.
Dialogs can be activated by using cmd+the letter of the first action. e.g "File already exists, replace / cancel" cmd+R and cmd+C would work.
This is far superior than tabbing around IMHO, but you can do that too, it's an option in settings.
>Of course, I'd like to know how something like this can be done faster using the keyboard.
- cmd+space
- sys <return>
- keyb <down> <return>
- tab
then left and right arrows to choose which tab you want
I think this request is a poor workflow example for keyboard shortcuts. Better examples would be workflows that are a chain of repetitive actions in a sequence.
You may not have tab access for windows/dialog boxes. I think it is deactivated by default. You can activate with ctrl+f7 or system preferences > keyboard > shortcuts > click radial at the bottom for all controls.
Tabbing through the controls like mad, which people keep suggesting, is of course super-tiring and requires keeping track of the subtle focus indicator—and is not seriously a way to use the keyboard. Instead, there's an app called Shortcat that can activate those controls, with you typing the control's text or a part of it. Like a combination of Vimium and Spotlight. Alas, the app is not free.
Also, personally instead of Spotlight I prefer Alfred, which can replace many shortcuts with commands, which are way more ‘mnemonic’. E.g. locking the screen is ‘scr’ in Alfred for me, which pops up ‘Screen saver’ as the suggestion.
> On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard.
At least on Windows, this is for historical reasons: back in the late 80s and early 90s, when the Windows interface was originally designed, having a mouse (or any other pointing device) was optional. Windows had to be fully usable on computers which came only with a keyboard. (There were a couple of exceptions, IIRC the Paintbrush application which came with Windows required a mouse, for understandable reasons.)
Granted, I had to disable Quicksilver (lovely app) to enable spotlight, but this is as simple as:
Summon spotlight to open System Preferences
Tab to search
Search for your keyboard Settings
Hit Return
Tab to search
Search again
Hit Return
I get it's not the Windows dynamic (and having just had to spin up a few test server 2008 VMs on vmware today for a specific test, I do appreciate what Windows offers), but it's quite doable. I actually didn't even know how to do it before writing this as I've been used to Windows due to work, but using normal keyboard navigation tools (tab), it was fast to get to what I wanted.
To get to those panes, cmd + space for Spotlight and typing in the pane window works pretty well. Sometimes the index doesn't bring up the answer quickly.
But working in the pane once you're there? You've got me, I don't know how to do that without a mouse.
also alt-tabbing between recently active windows of any app (rather than between whole apps, windows of the same app, or tabs of the same app) is curiously difficult.
after years of frustration, i finally found that "Move focus to active or next window" is the analogue functionality in macos keyboard shortcuts, and it's now mapped to the slightly-less-awkward alt-cmd-tab, from the very awkward ^F4. it's not quite the same in keeping the stack order however (in some nebulous way i haven't really determined yet).
system preferences ->
command + space, type system preferences, enter
keyboard settings ->
command + space, type system preferences, type keyboard, enter
I had quite the opposite experience. It was a few years ago when I tried to switch from Windows/Linux, but the lack of keyboard support in certian situations drove me nuts; I even remember one system popup notification with a single "Ok" button which I couldn't get rid of by keyboard (Enter, Spacebar, Esc... - no effect). Meanwhile, in many Linux DEs, especially the combination of keyboard and mouse allows for super quick window management (resizing and moving while holding a modifier like Alt, which AFAIK is impossible natively under Windows or MacOS).
- You can get rid of those annoying pop-up notifications by doing Cmd-Period (Cmd+.) It will work when even Esc / Cmd+W won't! It's a hidden shortcut not many know about, and not on the linked Apple shortcuts page.
- You can make all those system dialogs navigable (to use tab and spacebar to execute buttons) by enabling: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls".
It can take years to learn everything that macOS secretly offers, but no more than it took me to be at that level on Windows, or any Linux DE. I agree though, multiple Linux DEs seem superior to both macOS and Windows with their out-of-the-box hotkey ability. For everything else, there's Mastercard, uh, AutoKey.
This is also true of a pop up that has options like yes, no, cancel. In other OS's, this would be done with an arrow key, but in MacOS, this is done via mouse, I think.
I suspect there will be a comment that tells me how to do this with a keyboard?
> Meanwhile, in many Linux DEs, especially the combination of keyboard and mouse allows for super quick window management (resizing and moving while holding a modifier like Alt, which AFAIK is impossible natively under Windows or MacOS).
not a linux user: why do you need to hold a modifier to resize a window?
cmd-shift-first letter will activate nearly any dialog box button. Some folks griped when the first marzipan/combine apps wouldn't support that, but I believe they caught up sometime last spring.
Window management is one area where this is definitely not true. Window snapping is something people have to install Spectacle/Rectangle for and even then shortcuts to move windows to workspaces are sorely missing for me.
Both are woefully behind a good Xorg based window manager. i3 blows Windows and OSX window management out of the water, no matter what add-on is installed.
It's dangerous though, one of my biggest fears is getting a job that won't let me use Linux.
Try BetterTouchTool. It has window snapping built-in and it has all sorts of options for hotkey actions for snapping and moving windows between desktops.
Also you can use it to get middle click on a MacBook trackpad and to completely customize the touchbar in quite complex ways (doesn't even require disabling SIP to do that).
It would be nice if a third-party tool wasn't required, but I think it's worth the cost (and if you owned BetterSnapTool in the past, it actually costs nothing extra to upgrade the license).
Wow, my experience couldn't be more different. I think my biggest annoyance is how ⌘-Tab ignores different windows of the same program, so I constantly have to switch between ⌘-Tab and ⌘-`.
The funny thing is this is one of my favorite features, it keeps the switcher uncluttered. If you don't like it, you can use "Mission Control" (Control+Up Arrow) that will show you all windows across all applications (pressing Control+Down Arrow is the same but only within windows of the current application).
You can also switch with Command+Tab and once you hover over the application you want, you can press Command+Down Arrow (or Up Arrow or even Key 1) and that will show you all windows within that application (the same as Control+Down Arrow). Notice that each window has a title and you can press the initial letter and that window will get focus. You can then press Enter to select it.
Yeah Apple is woefully behind as I see it. The window management is clunky and backwards and the keyboard shortcuts being lauded here are too.
They get even the simplest things wrong. Instead of labeling app menu items with a word or abbreviation, they use a freaking symbol that isn’t printed anywhere on the keyboard.
They have more 2-handed / 3+ key shortcuts than any other OS despite lacking the ability to let you control every aspect of the macOS GUI like you can with Windows or most Linux DEs.
It’s laughable to me that anyone thinks it’s a good system and I’d love to see a productivity contest between workers who are experts in their respective OSes. Mac people would lose miserably. There’s no doubt in mind after years of working with and watching Mac users pitiful attempts at doing anything quickly or efficiently.
I prefer this personally, but what does annoy me is that ⌘+` doesn't work with any windows that are fullscreened. I don't use it often, but when I do it's annoying to lose all keyboard navigation.
I use an app called Contexts which hijacks ⌘+` with extra functionality (and includes fullscreen windows), but it seems to be abandoned so I fear it will stop working eventually.
For Zoom, that home/launcher screen can be closed so you can switch to your video without having to do the above. Realized that after being annoyed for weeks.
I recommend changing the ⌘-` shortcut to ⌘-§, which is right above Tab on Mac keyboards (Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Keyboard > Move focus to next window).
Having both in the same area of the keyboard makes my brain happy.
>It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts compared to all other operating systems. [...] Everything just makes sense logically and mnemonically [...]
I get your point but macOS still has inconveniences for many tasks:
To be clear, that first one is pretty outdated, and while Yosemite was not day one, it was over 6 years ago now.
>maximize a window
Control-Command-F: Use the app in full screen, if supported by the app.
>file manager
Option-Command-Space brings up a Finder window from anywhere I believe, but defaults it to search mode, so you may have to chain the shortcut for a particular directory or Go to Folder after that.
I'm guessing the Activity Monitor thing is more that there is not a dedicated shortcut for launching any single app in macOS (that I can think of).
> It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts compared to all other operating systems.
You only think that because you're used to macos shortcuts.
> There absolutely has been some people there who deeply care and think long and hard about how experts use their systems even if the actual main company doesn't care so much about that segment anymore.
Do any macbooks have a numpad? Lack of a numpad is the opposite of 'thinking long and hard about how experts use their systems'.
> Everything just makes sense logically and mnemonically like using shift to invert actions like cmd+z and cmd+shift+z rather than having ctrl+z and ctrl+y for undo/redo.
ctrl+z/ctrl+shift+z, tab/shift+tab, etc, is how my fairly default linux system works.
> Then add to this the ability to rebind any shortcuts in any app at an OS level.
You can do this on pretty much any operating system.
> were some way to actually achieve this level of coherence across the whole system on Linux.
What level of coherence? All you said is you prefer macos default shortcuts...? If we're talking about support for customisation then macos is laughably far behind linux in every single respect.
My own experience, being forced to work with macos for the last few years has been quite annoying. The UI is very buggy, the app bar auto-hide constantly breaks, windows randomly disappear, macos has it's own weird (coherent?) set of shortcuts different from every other operating system, there is an insane amount of popups and notifications, maximising/fullscreening a window creates a new workspace which complicates quickly switching between windows, etc. Ability to customize the system is okay... still far behind linux. I literally do not see a single benefit of macos over linux.
Some you need to be have octopus fingers to hit them with one hand, and others are particularly weird such as screenshot (cmd+alt+4/3 isn't it?) - windows is just "something" + printscreen.
Windows keyboard shortcuts tend to feel a bit more ergonomic to me, but then I've used Windows much more than the Mac.
Screenshots are cmd-shift 3 or 4 or 5. Cmd shift is a familiar enough chord in Mac OS keyboarding, it's used quite a lot.
The differences between the 3 types of screen shorting is that Cmd-shift 3 immediately screenshots the whole screen. Cmd-shift 4 lets you select the area that is captured, pressing the space bar after hitting the key combo turns the cursor into a camera that allows you to screenshot just a window by hovering and clicking. Cmd-shift 5 gives you even more options including screen recording.
It’s true you can use a mac with a broken (partially functional) trackpad — I did for a couple of years and it wasn’t a noticeable impairment...but I’ve been an Emacs user since the 70s so am keyboard-by-default already.
But I can’t say the Mac is the best: Windows, back in the Gates days, had keyboard commands for almost everything at his insistence (some of the PMs weren’t enthusiastic but couldn’t go against him of course). I’m not a windows fan (prefer the Mac’s direct manipulation approach to the subject-verb-object model at the foundation of Windows) but I really respected and appreciated that commitment by MS.
The clean separation between command-keys (for app-behavior) and control-keys (for emacs-like text navigation) is far and away my favorite aspect of using MacOS. I know it sounds crazy, but I navigate through text far more frequently than anything else. The ability to further customize[1] these to support meta-keys (using option) and rebinding caps-lock to control makes for a very powerful experience.
>It's a little frustrating because I'm trying to move my computing away from Apple because I'm no longer convinced they care about Macs in the long term…
They just committed to transition the Mac platform to arguably the most performant (per watt) architecture available and just released the public beta Big Sur.
If they didn't care about the Mac long term, why on Earth would they go through the trouble of making this transition?
The Mac just set a June quarter record of $7.1 billion in revenue, up 22% from last year. These numbers give Apple a lot to care about: https://www.apple.com/investor/earnings-call/
My biggest irritation with MacOS is CMD-Tab back to Finder breaks constantly.
Then the terminal short cuts are bound to CTL, and at least on my Macbook Pro, CTL is only on one side. I also don't like how Return is "change a file name" instead of "run a file." There are so many things that are inconsistent with other OS's, that I guess it just comes down to what you are used to.
I've found that MacOS is much more touch-pad / mouse heavy than other OS's. For example, CTL-K is awesome for browsing through a Linux folder system. This would put you in the path area, so you can sort of use it like a terminal.
Browsing finder in MacOS is painful, click here, click there, hope you don't get lost, etc.
> at least on my Macbook Pro, CTL is only on one side
This is standard for modern Macs; that said, one of the first things I do with a system is use the "Keyboard" preference pane to remap caps lock to Control ("Keyboard" -> "Modifier Keys").
macOS stock Finder does have basic cursor key navigation. It's not Xtree, NortonCommander awesome. (Edit: Oops. This linked cheatsheet does list the Finder navigation keys.)
> I've found that MacOS is much more touch-pad / mouse heavy than other OS's. For example, CTL-K is awesome for browsing through a Linux folder system. This would put you in the path area, so you can sort of use it like a terminal.
macOS’s Finder has the _Go to folder_ (⇧⌘G) command for that. It’s not exactly the same but it basically allows you to do the same thing.
You could just use a keyboard with a forward delete key, like the larger keyboards that Apple themselves sell. It turns out they work! If you don't have a keyboard with a forward delete key, having a shortcut to generate that code seems kind of handy to me. But complaining that Apple makes smaller keyboards that don't include that key while still offering the same functionality at the fairly trivial cost of having to use a modifier is, you know, also a choice!
For the record, layout choice on Apple's 60% keyboards is a different topic than operating system support for keyboard navigation.
Also, I wish you luck on the quest for the perfect 60% keyboard. I'm on the same hunt, although I can make myself happy most anywhere if I have https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org installed
Yeah everyone suggests AutoHotKey, I tried it and found it insanely janky.
It just isn't an acceptable solution at all and I wish Windows users would demand better. Really think better is possible and don't think it's even a hard problem.
If you ever have to go back, Hammerspoon is the AHK like app for macOS, and karabiner elements can do advanced remapping if you don't need the scripting.
I agree. To the point where they introduced the touch bar. Now there is no way to sleep your MBP with a keyboard shortcut. You now have to add a button to the touch bar, which you then accidentally press and your MBP goes to sleep while you are in the midst of typing out an email. Genius!
Desktop short cut! How is there no Shortcut for seeing the Desktop?
Legacy of Steve Jobs doing the opposite of Windows is also a killer. Mouse Scroll wheel is opposite, close open windows icon on left and not right, not using Control but use Command key. These are not due to any reason other then to make it difficult to work between Windows and Apple. Drives me CRAZY because I have to use Apple and Windows.
⌘F3 shows the desktop. You can have a button for this on the Touch Bar.
The Mac has been released in 1984 with the close icon on the left side of the window's title bar, and keyboard shortcuts using the command key located directly to the left (later also to the right) of the space bar.
Windows has been released over a year later in 1985 with its own paradigm for these. So it seems like in fact, Windows has been designed to do things differently from the Mac, not the other way around.
> It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts compared to all other operating systems.
It's shocking to me that people will make authoritative sounding comments about systems that they don't use, and get their facts wrong. It's shocking to me that the supposedly bright people on Hacker News upvote it.
I couldn't care less how apple microoptimizes keyboard interaction. Now that shortcuts are mostly uniform across Windows and Linux, better they would be same on Macs too.
So break 37 years of consistency because Microsoft decided to basically replicate it (9 years after the fact, btw) using a key-chord that was already in use for SIGINT and that Gnome and KDE copied, shortsightedly given their target base OS?
I don't find it shocking at all, when you consider just how much farther advanced Apple is in so many different ways including disability accessibility (please let me know if you have ever seen a blind person that uses anything but an iPhone), inter-device sharing/airdrop, configuration sync across devices, etc.
(not disagreeing) It's been this way for decades. Learning to use a computer growing up, it was almost immediately apparent to me how widespread, useful, and discoverable Apple's keyboard shortcuts were on OS 8 or 9, especially when compared to Windows 3/3.1/95.
The consistency of macOS keyboard shortcuts is one of the main reasons I have huge problems switching to Linux or Windows. Despite the non-trivial amount of tweaking and customization, I could never achieve the same level outside of macOS.
Just to name a few:
- CMD+left/right: start/end of line
- CMD+up/down: start/end of file
- CMD+Shift+arrows: corresponding selection
- Alt+left/right: word movement
- Alt+Shift+arrows: corresponding word selection
- CMD+a: select all
- CMD+1,2,3: switch between tabs in browsers/iterm/IDEs/editors
(surprisingly and infuriatingly, this does not apply to native macOS tabs; e.g. in Finder Cmd+1/2/3 changes the view, but not tabs)
All that + the fact that clipboard, undo/redo, app and windows switching are ALL done via CMD makes it truly a modern hyper button. And you still have Control for Emacs bindings, which also work in most Cocoa text fields.
If you're interested, this [1] is one of the best attempts to bring macOS keybindings to Linux (in particular, Elementary OS). It's a set of settings for Autokey [2].
There is also Kinto [3], which solves one particular problem: copy-paste from terminal with consistent shortcuts.
Not sure how different this is from Windows. Use home/end for start of line or ctrl+page up/page down to go to start of document. Ctrl+left/right moves by words. Holding shift selects while doing any of these. Ctrl+backspace/delete to delete by word instead of character. Ctrl+a to select everything. Ctrl+1,2,3 select tabs, Windows+1,2,3 selects apps. The main advantage I see on Mac is the separate ctrl/cmd keys that let you use ctrl+c/v for unix terminals. Other than that, I think it's whatever you're used to.
Of course some laptops don't have end/home/page up/page down keys and you have to avoid those.
It's not just that some laptops don't have them, it's also that they're always in a different place. Every time I use windows, I need to look at the keyboard to find home, end, etc. On any Mac I use I don't have to search.
This is consistency in UX is what keeps me from switching to linux full-time for my personal rig.
I would assume the keyboard UX would be a low-lying fruit. I'm hoping someone with deep knowledge about linux can help me understand what is stopping various distros from simply copying the mac keyboard layout. Replace 'cmd' with the 'super' key and setup the key combinations to match macOS. That way they're consistent whether you're in a GUI application or the command-line.
Is it that the super key is not available on every computer? Or are these shortcuts protected by some sort of a copyright? Kinto seems to work by intercepting signals and reinterpreting them, then why not have the X keyboard component recompiled with a macOS keymap? I'm not at all knowledgeable in this area, so may be missing some very obvious challenges to doing so.
> The consistency of macOS keyboard shortcuts is one of the main reasons I have huge problems switching to Linux or Windows.
When I left Mac 8 years or so it was quite the opposite:
- home and end depended on application, the only one that worked consistently was ctrl - e and ctrl - a but they didn't work with shift so select to end of line was hit and miss
- one of the shortcuts that sometimes worked was cmd - left, unfortunately that was mapped to go-back-one-page in Safari. Kknd of annoying when you try to select a sentence in a form and end up losing all your carefully crafted edits.
- fn button in the place where ctrl is supposed to be, but only on laptop and small keyboards, not on the full size one. Not remappable (I understand this is fixed now).
I struggled with that machine for three years. After that I realized that Macs are perfect - for Mac people, not for Linux peasants like me.
FWIW, I've found cmd+left to be very consistent, the only app(s) that I can think of that it doesn't work in are terminal apps, where I use ctrl+a etc.
And thankfully, the Safari bug/inconsistency has been fixed. In all the major browsers on macos now, CMD+left will behave like "beginning of line" when you're in a text box.
I feel your struggle though, as someone who frequently has to / chooses to use Win/Linux, I don't think I'll ever end the fight against the shortcut patterns that have been ingrained in my hands.
- Ctrl + Shift + left/right arrows: corresponding word selection
- Ctrl + a: select all
- Alt + 1/2/3/...: switch between tabs in Chrome and VSCode where I tested it, don't know if it is working in ALL apps, for example it does not work on alacritty+tmux (where I spend most of my time) for obvious reasons.
I don't know about the consistency, but some of these make more sense semantically, like Alt+1/2/3 - "alternate to a different tab".
I change Cycle Windows to Ctrl+Tab in the Window Manager. I disable menu Alt keys where I can.
I use AutoKey for Terminal so that it works like Terminal in Mac OS X: Copy and paste and other Application shortcuts do not require using a shift key. Alt+C is the kill key (control-c) and all the rest of the Alt keys work like control keys in the terminal.
And yes, despite the non-trivial amount of tweaking and customization, I could never achieve the same level outside of Mac OS X.
> (surprisingly and infuriatingly, this does not apply to native macOS tabs; e.g. in Finder Cmd+1/2/3 changes the view, but not tabs)
That behaviour predates native tabs on the Mac, historically it even predates Safari and other browsers with tabs, I believe.
⌘1,2,3 in Safari for a long time selected favourites in the favourites bar. There is still a setting to still do that. I use it for useful bookmarklets.
The other thing that bugs me when using apps that don't use Mac widgets is single line text fields. If your cursor is at or near the end of the line, pressing the up arrow moves the cursor to the beginning of the line. Same with the down arrow when the cursor is at or near the beginning of the line. Any Mac app that doesn't do that is not using native text fields.
i'm currently switching from windows/linux to Mac and I'm used to using a full-length mechanical keyboard with ins/del/home/end/pgup/pgdn buttons. Yes, mac has these cmd+ shortcuts that work as expected, but the "usual" keys behave wrong/inconsistent in some apps:
Chrome:
- Shift+Home/End selects to the start/end of the entire textarea.
- Home/End first scrolls the textarea, if it is not, if it is already scrolled (this is double weird if you are somewhere down in the textarea, press home, it scrolls you to the top, press home again, it scrolls you back to where you were with the cursor on beginning of the line, then it goes to the start/end of the line as expected.
Safari:
- Home/End only scroll the page, have no effect in textarea,
- Shift+Home/End selects to the start/end of the textarea.
Also, I can't get insert to work in none of my IDEs (pycharm, vscode)
I just have a macbook, so no insert key at all, but vscode has an insert extension that I use when I need insert mode. Probably doing it wrong, but it works very nicely for me when I need it.
I’m loving WSL2 and would like to start mixing my gaming desktop more into my workflow, but I simply cannot feel productive without CMD+left/right.
If anyone knows of a way to rebind Alt+left/right to mimic the behavior, please give me a shout out. I’ve tried to reproduce with remapping to Home/End but I’ve found it really inconsistent.
This doesn't work globally like the other shortcuts, but Ctrl+left/right will move the cursor to word boundaries in camelCasedWords, which is great for programming. I quickly tested it and it worked in Xcode and Sublime Text but not in TextEdit. (You also have to disable the system shortcuts for moving between spaces)
I highly recommend everyone learn the readline keys. They apply everywhere, in chrome, messengers, etc. They're the most valuable hotkeys that I've learned other than learning vim.
I set them as the Message Of The Day in my .zshrc (or .bashrc if you don't use zsh) until I memorized them. <c-f> is genric formatting for hotkeys, where c stands for control and you type "f" at same time.
IMPORTANT: For these to be level extremely effective you MUST REMAP your caps lock key to a control key. System Prefs > Keyboard > Modifier Keys button at bottom right
# MOTD
function echo_color() {
local color="$1"
printf "${color}$2\033[0m\n"
}
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-f Move forward"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-b Move backward"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-p Move up"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-n Move down"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-a Jump to beginning of line"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-e Jump to end of line"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-d Delete forward"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-h Delete backward"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-k Delete forward to end of line"
echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-u Delete entire line"
Imagine you want to go up 2 lines to edit a HN comment. You could move your right hand to arrow key, or you can simply press caps with your pinky and type "p" with your other pinky. So much faster! Now you can see why these are so effective, and are really my favorite.
Note that as you start to use these you will be pleased to see they apply in a lot of applications. For example, type command+L in chrome to jump to the address bar and highlight it, now type "news" in the address bar. The autocomplete dropdown will pop up. Now type control+n (readline move down) and you can scroll through the list.
MOTD - message of the day, it's the small text blurb that's printed when you start a new shell instance on linux or mac computers. Not sure if it's a thing on windows.
If you don't use MOTD, putting the shortcuts you wanna memorize in a macOS sticky note works great. Or editing them into your desktop image. Or a legit paper sticky note / label printer label stuck to your monitor - no screen real estate gets consumed that way
As someone who uses the above constantly in Mac OS, including while typing this comment: Is there a way to make this happen in Linux—to have all those commands work in (the majority of) text fields across all applications, and to have Linux's original meaning of "c-a" (Select All) and so forth be accessible via "(Windows key)-a"?
The ergonomics are terrible, aren't they? I suppose in your case I'd probably use my pinky and suffer.
My Air has a JIS keyboard, so the control key is where your caps lock is. Most of my keyboards are configured this way (either physically or in software); on those that aren't, I use my opposing palm to press ctrl. I can't imagine using a Mac with flat keys and no right control =(
I use karabiner elements to remap caps to ctrl for most chords, also it will act as escape if hit alone and it will act as the arrow keys when used with hjkl like in vim. and finally it will act as caps lock if you press it with right shift. pretty awesome setup.
I edited my post. You absolutely must rebind caps to control. One of the best changes I ever made, and I regret that I didn't add that to my post after so many people have seen it. Thanks for reminding me
Because I make lots of use of control, I usually map Right Command to Right Control, so I can easily thumb control, command or option at practically any time.
Because it allows you to type these hotkeys by moving your pinky 1 key to the left, which is orders of magnitude easier than the control key at the bottom left.
You can only jump by word, forwards and back, by holding the option key while using the arrow left and right.
Backspacing however can be done by word by using c-w to delete back by word. Unfortunately this hotkey only works in terminal I think, so you'd have to do option+backspace in chrome, etc.
Tools > customize keyboard. Select the All Commands category to see all possible shortcuts. You can adjust some shortcuts to match readline shortcuts. C-n, p, f, b, k, a, and e are all possible. Even Cmd-f and Cmd-b for forward word and backward word can be done. Some of these do override existing shortcuts. Also, this can’t be done for PowerPoint.
Microsoft has implemented their own text controls system in their apps. It's annoying as heck to me. I should say it's not true in Teams and OneNote. I'm guessing they are electron apps.
The main shortcut to remember is ⌘⇧? (or ⌘⇧/ on some layouts) which focuses Search under Help. It searches through all menu items and pressing down arrow will highlight it and show its shortcut. Pressing enter will execute it, but I prefer to cancel and use the direct shortcut to build up muscle memory.
wow, i was not aware of this! this also works to trigger menu items that don't have assigned keyboard shortcuts. I use Macs since Mac OS 9 and somehow I never discovered this.
on Big Sur this also hovers an arrow next to the menu item, this is what it looks like:
> Note for users with a German keyboard layout: Given that the ? character is only reachable by pressing Shift, the ⇧? combination won’t work for us.
Not arguing, but I think I don't understand the point. Also on a QWERTY-keyboard, ? requires ⇧. In fact, ⌘⇧/ and ⌘⇧? not only have the same effect, but are literally just different ways of describing exactly the same keypress. If you need ⇧ to access a key, but ⇧ is already included in the combination, then what's the problem?
Oh my gosh thank you for pointing this out. I love that search bar and use it to find/activate things in programs pretty frequently that might not have a keybind or ability to create a keybind. The fact that I can now access that via a keybind that allows me to find it is phenomenal and I'm somewhat embarrassed to have been using a Mac for so many years loving keyboard shortcuts and not know about this one. I should honestly just read the entire linked article and make some notes about important ones.
Disclaimer: I made this, haven't officially launched but I thought you might find it useful. If you do check it out, I'd love to hear your feedback (especially things that aren't clear, or objections to trying it based on the website) and would be happy to gift you a license if you'd like.
Brilliant. Refinements like this is why I love the Mac. All functions in all apps are condensed into the menu bar, and you can navigate the bar with a few keystrokes.
So is this like what Ubuntu's Unity did years ago, making all an app's menus searchable? Seemed like the smartest new feature at the time, though I never really got a chance to use it. And I don't have a mac to test this on and can't quite picture what it does from the description. Certainly I'll take anything that avoids the "is it under View or Windows or Edit???" hunt.
A bit of a rant, but could be worth getting some input. Coming from mostly a Windows background, it feels like Mac's despite all these shortcuts, still don't have "alt-tab" working properly. The equivalent on Mac is Command-tab, but it doesn't work when going from a desktop app (ie, not maximized) to a maximized window. I can go the other direction just fine, and between maximized windows, but choosing a max window from a desktop app just does nothing.
Am I using it "wrong"? Should I only use maxed windows or only desktop un-maxed windows and not both at the same time? I've googled this multiple times and found little help.
""Command" + "~" will switch between windows of the app currently in focus."
Yes, but not properly, with memory ... C-Tab (like we expect, everywhere) will let you rapidly cycle back and forth between the two apps you are using - no matter where they are/were in the stack when you first C-Tab'd over.
However, C-` forces you to move through the entire stack for every switch. If your app-window is eight windows away, you need to go 16 spaces/slots to switch back and forth.
This has always been the case and, IMO, is actually a bug. It suggests that Apple employees don't use their systems like this because they wouldn't put up with it for one day if they did.
I literally just used Cmd-Tab to switch back and forth between this desktop Safari window and a full screen Slack window, so it's clearly possible. :)
And, I just confirmed my suspicion: if you want this behavior, go to System Preferences > Mission Control, and check the box for "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for an application". With that unchecked macOS behaves the way you're describing; with it checked it behaves the way I'm describing.
I've been using Macs for years, and I agree. It is infuriating that I can tab away from an application, and then be unable to tab immediately back to it. I'm at a loss why this is missing. It is the workflow between apps when they are not maximized or minimized. I fail to see any utility in breaking that flow for minimized and maximized windows.
I am unaware of any key combination that can restore a minimized window, or restore focus to a full screen window. Surly they exist though, so if anyone here knows what they are please do tell.
To restore a minimized window, cmd-tab to that app, then control-down arrow to show all the windows of the app, then use the arrow keys to select that window (minimized windows are smaller at the bottom), then return to open it.
Your experience had been the same as mine. I bought this program a couple years ago and haven't looked back - https://contexts.co/.
However, it seems it may not support the latest MacOS builds. Actually I just checked their Twitter page and saw they said it supports Mojave, so maybe it does.
The trick is to stop using full-screen maximized windows. If you hold down Option when clicking the green maximize button you can make windows maximized the old-fashioned way, where cmd-tab behavior makes sense. You can also bind global keyboard shortcuts to this action. I use cmd-shift-up. I also bind cmd-shift-left and cmd-shift-right to fill the left/right 50% of the screen.
Beyond cmd-tab working sensibly, you also get the advantage of not having annoying sliding animations when switching maximized windows. You can mitigate the animation somewhat for full-screen windows in accessibility options (it’s an effect of a “Reduce animations” checkbox or something like that) but it only turns it from sliding to a faster fade — there’s no way to make it instantaneous like non-full-screen window switching is.
Unfortunately, maximized windows and full screen windows are not equivalent, and there are plenty of contexts in which fullscreen is what is required (virtual desktop, distraction free mode, graphics apps, etc. etc). Maximized windows retain the window bar, and if you don't have auto hide enabled on the dock or menu bar they will remain as well taking up screen real estate unnecessarily.
I've been using Mac for a couple of years, before that Windows and Linux and have to say that the bottom task bar (as in Windows 95 and Gnome 2) is easily the best window management paradigm I've used. The best implementation is Gnome 2 / MATE because you can switch windows with the mouse wheel when the cursor is on the task bar.
Switching between tabs in a web browser is a very similar UX problem - and browsers got it right. Imagine that you would have to switch tabs in your browser using like you switch between windows in Mac OS. It sounds horrible. And the W95 style task bar is even better than browser tab bar because it's at the bottom of the screen so you don't have to position the cursor vertically.
It's not perfect but I've learned to love it. Command + Tab to the minimised app, while still pressing Command, press and hold Option, then release command. That pulls up the minimised app assuming you only have one instance. Here's a better explanation: https://www.google.com/amp/s/lifehacker.com/hold-down-the-op...
there's another one where you command-tab to an app and then press the down arrow to see all the windows associated with it. and then when use the arrow keys to select the window and then you hit enter it will raise that window from the dock or the background.
The thing is, this is not full screen maximize. Mac like most Unix systems (Linux included) can create multiple virtual screens. What this means you have does windows on different screen from your computer point of view.
This is something what you may or may not know as Workspace from Windows or KDE but on steroids.
How virtual screens are handled by the OS is different story. As a user of ungodly discussing i3 tailing manager I can only say, problems you described I personally consider as terrible design and putting look over functionality.
Basically this looks like OS X do care only for current screen if it's full screen or for any screen if it's not. What's inconsistent (terrible UX) and hard to use (also terrible UX).
macOS creates a distinction between windows and apps that Windows doesn't. Note that it isn't actually doing nothing when you command-tab to that app — it is selecting it. You can see the menu bar change. It's just not bringing the app's window to the forefront, because the window is in a different "space". If you create a second Desktop and put your app's window there, the same thing will happen.
I do this all the time every day. It’s my primary mode of work, going from full-screen maximized apps to windowed “desktop” apps, and back, with cmd-tab. I don’t remember ever not being able to do this, but I’ve only started using full screen often within the last few versions.
a lot of people probably don't know this but if you have a minimized to dock app and you command+tab to that app and then hold command and then press option while releasing command it will raise the last window from the dock to be open again. so command+tab while holding command then releasing tab and then pressing option and then releasing command will re-focus the last window if there is none visible.
The existence of this thread, with no mention of the Touch Bar yet, but we're seeing keen enthusiasm over shortcuts with as much as 3 keyboard keys involved, demonstrates exactly how useless the gimmick of the Touch Bar is. It provides no snappiness in tactility or aurality, which is a key part of why keyboard shortcuts are so useful and memorable.
My Touch Bar even froze up the other day, though that was almost the first time it's happened in my 3 years of using 3 generations of Touch Bar MBPs. Long live the keyboard, and I hope Apple phases out the Touch Bar soon.
>The existence of this thread, with no mention of the Touch Bar yet, but we're seeing keen enthusiasm over shortcuts with as much as 3 keyboard keys involved, demonstrates exactly how useless the gimmick of the Touch Bar is.
For the vast majority of users, the shortcuts we all know and love might as well not exist.
>About 90 per cent of computer users don't use CTRL-F to search for a word - as they don't know such a keyboard shortcut exists, a Google survey found. The results stunned Google's Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness, Dan Russell.
"I think we just all assume that we all know it, but no one actually does."
This specific audience is exactly the wrong group to ask about the utility of the touch bar, since we are in the tiny minority who find traditional function keys to be useful.
Tech bubble and Google were similarly chagrined to realize normals used SERPs to navigate to web sites when organic results didn't have the site itself top of the list and users were ending up at places that confused them.
From Feb 15, 2010:
"Suddenly, the two worlds collided. The tech savvy ran head-on into the tech illiterate and mockery and disbelief started to overtake confusion as the general tone..."
"While we mock those users, the simple fact is they haven't necessarily failed, something failed them. With all of our talk about the semantic Web and search engine optimization and tailoring search results to the individual user, there are thousands upon thousands of users performing the same simple search and following the same wrong road. If this were a standard traffic sign misdirecting this many people, it would have been pulled down long ago."
Not that you are doing this but it is frustrating when people use this argument to justify the lack of value of some features for the general population, but this is just a "sell to the largest market" mentality. It fails to recognize the value of features that users must learn. This situation is often used to argue some features are unimportant when in fact the observation should be that there is a need for better product education.
Cars, games, and computers in general are examples of products that improve in value more rapidly as users learn how to use them as apposed to trying to cater to the least knowledgeable users. Computer games in particular often do a good job of teaching users about features incrementally.
I had to teach a new colleague (MBA with an innovation major) ctrl+c anf ctrl+v. To him, icons in a bar would probably be way more intuitive than looking for shorcuts online.
I find Google/Gmail also have advanced shortcuts that stem from unix style, and I could not imagine not being able to use J/K to rapidly select lots of email messages for bulk actions.
I enabled this on my parents account, and years later they still are mousing through each message individually, as if I never showed them how to do it.
Since the lockdowns started, I switched from a MacBook as a daily driver to an iMac. I have missed the Touch Bar 0% of the time. I hadn't even thought about it as something that was "missing" until now.
I doubt the Touch bar will stay the same. It runs on a separate arm soc and it would seem terribly wastefull to keep all of that after the arm transition.
So they'd have to put significant effort into it (to change the architecture to make it run on the new chip together with the system). I think they would do some major changes to it in this case.
Or they can phase it out and say it paved the way for the new arm macs and that it is no longer needed (and keep the face, not admitting that it was a failure). Especially so if the 1st Apple silicon Macbook gen is already touch based.
I hope they get rid of the Touch Bar during the transition. There were no WWDC sessions about it either.
I see this going the other way. All the keys will become a large touch/display area eventually. It wont me much worse since eventually we'll have dynamically morphing surfaces so the keys raise/depress and have tactile movements/vibrations/sounds. If history and trends have shown anything the future is more gimmicky not less, and useful bits come out of it from time to time. We'll be the generation to say "In my day keys were physically separate labelled and actually moved--crumbs getting inside were a real problem."
The touch bar isn't very useful, and it's bad for things that you want to really be "keys" that you want to be able to touch type. But it's nice for some things. Volume and brightness slider. Emojis sometimes.
Here's one use I found that I like: I sometimes work in the sunlight and want to switch to Light theme. I'm not aware of a nice convenient way to just toggle Light/Dark, so I found someone's instructions on how to bind a script that does that to a slot in the Touch Bar. Could that have been a keyboard shortcut? Sure, but I appreciate this option - kind of cool.
I have a dedicated lock button on the touch bar, which I use multiple times a day in the office. It's also great for searching through video and trimming in Final Cut.
Having the esc key on my 2019 model is good. But I hate how the touch bar offers zero tactile feedback, and reacts to even the slightest brush from the edge of a finger.
I've deleted all buttons except volume control and mute on mine, and I still end up inadvertently hitting mute sometimes when typing numbers and symbols.
The touch bar is an interesting concept, but I hardly use it as a new Mac user (got a MacBook pro for the first time ever this year), as cool as I thought it was at first.
I wish it had a few features to improve the experience:
- ability to lock an app. It would be nice to have zoom controls available like unmute when I don't have zoom window active
- hard buttons, with led screens. This would make things like debugging easier where I need to hit the "step over" button repeatedly
- easier customization without paid apps or scripting. I can only change a few defaults around
I think the touchbar would have been vastly more useful as a companion app for iPhone and iPad. As implemented, I can't afford to become used to it even if I wanted to unless I plan to be not just on a Mac, but specifically on a MacBook Pro with no external keyboard most of the time.
The biggest keyboard ability that macOS gives me is built-in combining characters. alt + a bunch of different characters gives you the ability to write seamlessly in multiple languages (in my case English, French, German and Swedish) without having to memorise altgr character codes or pop up an input panel.
You need a lot of those to write fluently in English, too, thanks to all the loan words and phrases we have. Particularly French, but quite a bit of German, too. Having some common currency symbols available is nice. Enough punctuation to write the occasional quotation or passage in French or (especially in the US) Spanish. Even m-dash and a variety of other useful English punctuation and symbols are easier to comfortably type on macOS than anywhere else.
I’d buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is silly. You’d think every default English layout would be fairly good for writing English, but I’ve not seen one nearly as good as Apple’s. You can use AltGr or US International, but they’re both much worse for general-purpose English writing.
Why other operating systems have’s stolen their alt/option-based typing layout is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close for composing English-language text. Certainly no other default layout.
[EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it if it's a disaster...):
• Bullets.
— m-dashes.
90°
Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my French is garbage).
Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥?
¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry)
∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on.
Straßburg
And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year, I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming. Every other OS, please just copy this layout for your default English keyboard.
Agree. Dashes alone are worth the price of a MacBook Pro: <minus> for a hyphen, <option-minus> for an en-dash, <shift-option-minus> for an em-dash. Trivial to remember.
Just as good is the way Apple handles diacritics. You type a prefix keystroke for the diacritic, then follow it with the letter that's being modified: ö is <option-u, o>, ï is <option-u, i>, è is <option-grave, e>.
Most of the prefixes have easy-to-remember mnemonics: umlaut is <option-u>, grave is <option-grave>, tilde is <option-n> (for eñe, I suppose), but even hunting down these prefixes is fairly discoverable. After typing the prefix, a placeholder character is displayed in the text box showing the mark you've just entered, something like: ̲̈.
Then:
- <escape> or moving the cursor with an arrow key enters the diacritic as standalone character (e.g. ¨ is <option-u, escape>).
- <backspace> deletes the diacritic.
- A character that takes the diacritic enters the modified character.
- A character that does not usually take the diacritic enters the diacritic and the unmodified character (e.g. <option-n, 5> yields ˜5).
Yep, I was leaving aside instant access to em-dashes, ellipses, proper curly quotes, dipthongs, etc. I contribute books to https://standardebooks.org/ as a hobby, so those are things I use daily as well.
Correct, Mac's are brilliant for writing in multiple languages for that reason. Whether I quickly need an ø or ü or é or û, it's so quick to type these that I cannot imagine it's even worth having a non-US layout keyboard regardless what language you primarily type in.
This is one of the features I miss most when using other systems. Text navigation and generation are incredibly easy on a Mac (comparatively, for me). It’s a joy to come back to.
I must say, the single feature that made me switch to macOS (or that made me comfortable with the switch) was the built-in emacs keybindings. I mapped Caps Lock to Control and can finally stick with sane killing & yanking text, as well as jumping around (front,end,back/fwd a char or word).
Gnome/GNU/Linux provides a compatibility layer that isn't as good as macOS's emacs bindings.
I've gone further to support meta-keybindings for whole-word movement. Control-b goes back one character, option-b goes back a whole word. It's really easy to add and customize:
Readit News
Everything just makes sense logically and mnemonically like using shift to invert actions like cmd+z and cmd+shift+z rather than having ctrl+z and ctrl+y for undo/redo.
Then add to this the ability to rebind any shortcuts in any app at an OS level. It's a little frustrating because I'm trying to move my computing away from Apple because I'm no longer convinced they care about Macs in the long term but just really wish either Microsoft would have the guts to throw a lot of their legacy out and fix all this stuff or that there were some way to actually achieve this level of coherence across the whole system on Linux.
I agree with your other points (including easier customizability), but have to completely disagree with this quoted sentence.
In my experience of using macOS/OS X/Mac OS X as well as Windows and Linux, macOS is one OS where a user cannot avoid using the mouse or trackpad!
On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard. The same on a Mac would be frustrating because keyboard navigation, especially for menus, is cumbersome. There are many Apple apps that cannot be completely controlled just using the keyboard either. There are many UI controls (including in dialogs) that just need a mouse or keyboard. When I find these instances, for me it's like death by a thousand paper cuts (note: I do have preferences set to navigate through all controls when hitting Tab).
If you disagree with my assessment, please try this using only the keyboard (no mouse or trackpad) and see how cumbersome it is (not to mention inconsistent in certain ways with the rest of the system too):
* Open System Preferences
* Open the Keyboard settings (just an example)
* Navigate from one tab to another within the settings
Of course, I'd like to know how something like this can be done faster using the keyboard.
It's also far more discoverable --- if you press Alt, accidentally or otherwise, the menu highlights and you can immediately use the arrow keys to navigate it. The underlined letters (sadly missing by default in later Windows versions) also make things more obvious.
There's also this oddity:
https://superuser.com/questions/59007/enter-to-open-a-file-i...
In just about every other graphical file explorer I've ever used, including the DOS ones, Enter opens the selected item. In the Mac Finder, it's Command-O. Yes, I get the fact that it's mnemonic with the others in that list, but it's completely contrary to the customary and rapidly learned behaviour of navigating using the arrow keys and Enter ---which is located very close to the arrow keys, and requires only one hand to operate easily.
1. Cmd-space to get Spotlight, "pref" to match System Preferences (on my machine at least), Enter
2. Search is auto highlighted so type "keyb", down arrow, Enter
3. Tab to focus on tab bar, left/right arrow key to move between tabs (this one is a bit buggy, seems the "Text" tab steals the focus so you have to shift-tab back to the tab bar)
1. cmd-space to open spotlight, type in system pref, hit enter
2. default behavior puts you in search, type in "keyboard", down arrow, enter
3. press tab to highlight top tabs, press left/right arrow to select new tab, press space to select
(requires the setting "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" which can be found in Keyboard -> Shortcuts.)
On Windows, I am constantly moving my right hand over to the INS/DEL/HOME/END/PGUP/PGDN block, because those keys are essential for really simple tasks like moving the cursor to the beginning of the line. And worse yet, I constantly miss the mark and move the cursor to some other part of the document, and have to find my way back again. I find it extremely frustrating.
On a Mac, I can ctrl-a to move to the beginning of a line, ctrl-e to move to the end. Nearly anywhere. Losing that convenience is super frustrating.
I was a heavy keyboard shortcut user on Windows – since Windows 3.1 days – which I believed was designed with mouse being an optional user interface device. Microsoft continued to bring ahead many of the keyboard shortcuts with Win95, XP and beyond.
When I switched to Mac, I was surprised to find how limited Mac keyboard shortcuts are, even till this day. For instance, on Windows one can resize windows with keyboard alone, but not possible, as far as I'm aware, on a Mac.
Not only is it lacking, Apple has also been dropping support for some keyboard shortcuts as well, e.g. you used to be able to put a Mac to sleep with Option+Command+Eject, with the latest TouchID MacBook Pro, Eject button is no longer there and the replacement shortcut with the power button is also not working on TouchID power button.
Dialogs can be activated by using cmd+the letter of the first action. e.g "File already exists, replace / cancel" cmd+R and cmd+C would work.
This is far superior than tabbing around IMHO, but you can do that too, it's an option in settings.
>Of course, I'd like to know how something like this can be done faster using the keyboard.
- cmd+space
- sys <return>
- keyb <down> <return>
- tab
then left and right arrows to choose which tab you want
I think this request is a poor workflow example for keyboard shortcuts. Better examples would be workflows that are a chain of repetitive actions in a sequence.
Also, personally instead of Spotlight I prefer Alfred, which can replace many shortcuts with commands, which are way more ‘mnemonic’. E.g. locking the screen is ‘scr’ in Alfred for me, which pops up ‘Screen saver’ as the suggestion.
At least on Windows, this is for historical reasons: back in the late 80s and early 90s, when the Windows interface was originally designed, having a mouse (or any other pointing device) was optional. Windows had to be fully usable on computers which came only with a keyboard. (There were a couple of exceptions, IIRC the Paintbrush application which came with Windows required a mouse, for understandable reasons.)
1. cmd+space
2. type keyboard
3. press enter
4. click tab until you're on the tab bar, then click right arrow to the tab you want
I found this to be straightforward:
1. cmd-space to open Spotlight, type "syste" and it offers System Preferences, hit return
2. Focus is in its search field. Type "keyboard", then down arrow + return to open Keyboard Prefs.
3. Hit tab to move keyboard focus to the tab bar
4. Use arrow keys to move keyboard focus between different tabs, and space or return to select one
Do you have keyboard navigation set to “All controls?” That’s the key and the first thing I do on any new Mac.
In other words, there are fewer things you can do with the keyboard, but it's easier to figure out which keys do them.
Summon spotlight to open System Preferences
Tab to search
Search for your keyboard Settings
Hit Return
Tab to search
Search again
Hit Return
I get it's not the Windows dynamic (and having just had to spin up a few test server 2008 VMs on vmware today for a specific test, I do appreciate what Windows offers), but it's quite doable. I actually didn't even know how to do it before writing this as I've been used to Windows due to work, but using normal keyboard navigation tools (tab), it was fast to get to what I wanted.
But working in the pane once you're there? You've got me, I don't know how to do that without a mouse.
In my heyday - I fucking impressed people who watched me navigate through either windows or linux with just the keyboard.
I fucking built a ton of AWS infra with just the keyboard - and that included using their UI as welll as AWSCLI
I am fond of those memories.
after years of frustration, i finally found that "Move focus to active or next window" is the analogue functionality in macos keyboard shortcuts, and it's now mapped to the slightly-less-awkward alt-cmd-tab, from the very awkward ^F4. it's not quite the same in keeping the stack order however (in some nebulous way i haven't really determined yet).
Deleted Comment
It is simple: purchase a trackball.
- You can make all those system dialogs navigable (to use tab and spacebar to execute buttons) by enabling: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls".
It can take years to learn everything that macOS secretly offers, but no more than it took me to be at that level on Windows, or any Linux DE. I agree though, multiple Linux DEs seem superior to both macOS and Windows with their out-of-the-box hotkey ability. For everything else, there's Mastercard, uh, AutoKey.
I suspect there will be a comment that tells me how to do this with a keyboard?
not a linux user: why do you need to hold a modifier to resize a window?
It's dangerous though, one of my biggest fears is getting a job that won't let me use Linux.
Also you can use it to get middle click on a MacBook trackpad and to completely customize the touchbar in quite complex ways (doesn't even require disabling SIP to do that).
It would be nice if a third-party tool wasn't required, but I think it's worth the cost (and if you owned BetterSnapTool in the past, it actually costs nothing extra to upgrade the license).
You can also switch with Command+Tab and once you hover over the application you want, you can press Command+Down Arrow (or Up Arrow or even Key 1) and that will show you all windows within that application (the same as Control+Down Arrow). Notice that each window has a title and you can press the initial letter and that window will get focus. You can then press Enter to select it.
They get even the simplest things wrong. Instead of labeling app menu items with a word or abbreviation, they use a freaking symbol that isn’t printed anywhere on the keyboard.
They have more 2-handed / 3+ key shortcuts than any other OS despite lacking the ability to let you control every aspect of the macOS GUI like you can with Windows or most Linux DEs.
It’s laughable to me that anyone thinks it’s a good system and I’d love to see a productivity contest between workers who are experts in their respective OSes. Mac people would lose miserably. There’s no doubt in mind after years of working with and watching Mac users pitiful attempts at doing anything quickly or efficiently.
I use an app called Contexts which hijacks ⌘+` with extra functionality (and includes fullscreen windows), but it seems to be abandoned so I fear it will stop working eventually.
Having both in the same area of the keyboard makes my brain happy.
https://manytricks.com/witch/
I get your point but macOS still has inconveniences for many tasks:
- maximize a window: on MS Windows, it's Winkey+UpArrow. On macos, it's more complicated: https://superuser.com/questions/718600/keyboard-shortcut-to-...
- bring up file manager: on Windows to bring up File Explorer, it's Winkey+E. On macos, it took until Yosemite 10.10 to provide a non-intuitive keyboard shortcut for Finder: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/114933/is-there-a-...
- view active process list: on Windows, it's Ctrl+Shift-Esc to bring up Task Manager. On macOS to bring up Activity Monitor, it's more complicated: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/1520/is-there-a-ke...
Hardly difficult, especially for the pros who tend to be touch typists.
There's also ⌥⌘esc if you just want to quickly kill an app.
Also for Finder, you can enable the "Show Finder search window" Spotlight shortcut and set it to whattever pleases you.
>maximize a window
Control-Command-F: Use the app in full screen, if supported by the app.
>file manager
Option-Command-Space brings up a Finder window from anywhere I believe, but defaults it to search mode, so you may have to chain the shortcut for a particular directory or Go to Folder after that.
I'm guessing the Activity Monitor thing is more that there is not a dedicated shortcut for launching any single app in macOS (that I can think of).
“Command - Space” then “av” gets me to Activity monitor instantaneously
You only think that because you're used to macos shortcuts.
> There absolutely has been some people there who deeply care and think long and hard about how experts use their systems even if the actual main company doesn't care so much about that segment anymore.
Do any macbooks have a numpad? Lack of a numpad is the opposite of 'thinking long and hard about how experts use their systems'.
> Everything just makes sense logically and mnemonically like using shift to invert actions like cmd+z and cmd+shift+z rather than having ctrl+z and ctrl+y for undo/redo.
ctrl+z/ctrl+shift+z, tab/shift+tab, etc, is how my fairly default linux system works.
> Then add to this the ability to rebind any shortcuts in any app at an OS level.
You can do this on pretty much any operating system.
> were some way to actually achieve this level of coherence across the whole system on Linux.
What level of coherence? All you said is you prefer macos default shortcuts...? If we're talking about support for customisation then macos is laughably far behind linux in every single respect.
My own experience, being forced to work with macos for the last few years has been quite annoying. The UI is very buggy, the app bar auto-hide constantly breaks, windows randomly disappear, macos has it's own weird (coherent?) set of shortcuts different from every other operating system, there is an insane amount of popups and notifications, maximising/fullscreening a window creates a new workspace which complicates quickly switching between windows, etc. Ability to customize the system is okay... still far behind linux. I literally do not see a single benefit of macos over linux.
Some you need to be have octopus fingers to hit them with one hand, and others are particularly weird such as screenshot (cmd+alt+4/3 isn't it?) - windows is just "something" + printscreen.
Windows keyboard shortcuts tend to feel a bit more ergonomic to me, but then I've used Windows much more than the Mac.
The differences between the 3 types of screen shorting is that Cmd-shift 3 immediately screenshots the whole screen. Cmd-shift 4 lets you select the area that is captured, pressing the space bar after hitting the key combo turns the cursor into a camera that allows you to screenshot just a window by hovering and clicking. Cmd-shift 5 gives you even more options including screen recording.
But I can’t say the Mac is the best: Windows, back in the Gates days, had keyboard commands for almost everything at his insistence (some of the PMs weren’t enthusiastic but couldn’t go against him of course). I’m not a windows fan (prefer the Mac’s direct manipulation approach to the subject-verb-object model at the foundation of Windows) but I really respected and appreciated that commitment by MS.
1. http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System....
You can even rebind these shortcuts and they’ll work in any text field. There’s even a hack to enable Vi-like shortcuts.
They just committed to transition the Mac platform to arguably the most performant (per watt) architecture available and just released the public beta Big Sur.
If they didn't care about the Mac long term, why on Earth would they go through the trouble of making this transition?
The Mac just set a June quarter record of $7.1 billion in revenue, up 22% from last year. These numbers give Apple a lot to care about: https://www.apple.com/investor/earnings-call/
Then the terminal short cuts are bound to CTL, and at least on my Macbook Pro, CTL is only on one side. I also don't like how Return is "change a file name" instead of "run a file." There are so many things that are inconsistent with other OS's, that I guess it just comes down to what you are used to.
I've found that MacOS is much more touch-pad / mouse heavy than other OS's. For example, CTL-K is awesome for browsing through a Linux folder system. This would put you in the path area, so you can sort of use it like a terminal.
Browsing finder in MacOS is painful, click here, click there, hope you don't get lost, etc.
This is standard for modern Macs; that said, one of the first things I do with a system is use the "Keyboard" preference pane to remap caps lock to Control ("Keyboard" -> "Modifier Keys").
binaryage's TotalFinder has a hotkey feature called Visor. https://totalfinder.binaryage.com
macOS stock Finder does have basic cursor key navigation. It's not Xtree, NortonCommander awesome. (Edit: Oops. This linked cheatsheet does list the Finder navigation keys.)
I've always coveted the Canon Cat's utopian interface, but have never actually tried it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat
macOS’s Finder has the _Go to folder_ (⇧⌘G) command for that. It’s not exactly the same but it basically allows you to do the same thing.
In macOS’ Finder, it’s command-shift-G. It also supports tab-completion and the usual text-manipulation shortcuts. It works also in file dialogs.
What happens when this bug occurs? I've run every version of OSX/macOS, and have never had a bug with using cmd-tab to switch to Finder
Yes, my all-time favourite is the shortcut fn-backspace for delete. How handy to not need to use a distinct delete button. Who would use that anyway?
(sarcasm included)
Also, I wish you luck on the quest for the perfect 60% keyboard. I'm on the same hunt, although I can make myself happy most anywhere if I have https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org installed
I just converted my MacBook Air to Windows 10 because I want-need AutoHotKey everywhere.
That and I’m tired of the GUI looking progressively more like a box of candy.
It just isn't an acceptable solution at all and I wish Windows users would demand better. Really think better is possible and don't think it's even a hard problem.
I assume you weren’t around during the early Aqua days.
I think it's because ctrl+z and ctrl+y are easy to press, while cmd+y is hard to press because of the bad placement of the cmd key.
> Option-Command-Esc (from the link)
I would like to see how you press this combo with your left hand only, Alt+F4 is not ideal but much easier if I raise my left elbow away from my body.
Er, what?!?
macOS is still not able to let you navigate menus with shortcuts.
I can't even reliably open the File menu on macOS with my keyboard. It's been "Alt-f" on Windows for over two decades.
Mac OS has the worst shortcuts in my opinion.
Desktop short cut! How is there no Shortcut for seeing the Desktop?
Legacy of Steve Jobs doing the opposite of Windows is also a killer. Mouse Scroll wheel is opposite, close open windows icon on left and not right, not using Control but use Command key. These are not due to any reason other then to make it difficult to work between Windows and Apple. Drives me CRAZY because I have to use Apple and Windows.
The Mac has been released in 1984 with the close icon on the left side of the window's title bar, and keyboard shortcuts using the command key located directly to the left (later also to the right) of the space bar.
Windows has been released over a year later in 1985 with its own paradigm for these. So it seems like in fact, Windows has been designed to do things differently from the Mac, not the other way around.
F11 for expose?
It's shocking to me that people will make authoritative sounding comments about systems that they don't use, and get their facts wrong. It's shocking to me that the supposedly bright people on Hacker News upvote it.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12445
I have seen several blind people using Androids.
Just to name a few:
- CMD+left/right: start/end of line
- CMD+up/down: start/end of file
- CMD+Shift+arrows: corresponding selection
- Alt+left/right: word movement
- Alt+Shift+arrows: corresponding word selection
- CMD+a: select all
- CMD+1,2,3: switch between tabs in browsers/iterm/IDEs/editors
(surprisingly and infuriatingly, this does not apply to native macOS tabs; e.g. in Finder Cmd+1/2/3 changes the view, but not tabs)
All that + the fact that clipboard, undo/redo, app and windows switching are ALL done via CMD makes it truly a modern hyper button. And you still have Control for Emacs bindings, which also work in most Cocoa text fields.
If you're interested, this [1] is one of the best attempts to bring macOS keybindings to Linux (in particular, Elementary OS). It's a set of settings for Autokey [2].
There is also Kinto [3], which solves one particular problem: copy-paste from terminal with consistent shortcuts.
1. https://github.com/roymckenzie/macos-autokey-phrases
2. https://github.com/autokey/autokey
3. https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
UPD: edit formatting
Of course some laptops don't have end/home/page up/page down keys and you have to avoid those.
You have answered your own question. It's home/end, Ctrl and Windows keys where in macOS it's always CMD+something.
I would assume the keyboard UX would be a low-lying fruit. I'm hoping someone with deep knowledge about linux can help me understand what is stopping various distros from simply copying the mac keyboard layout. Replace 'cmd' with the 'super' key and setup the key combinations to match macOS. That way they're consistent whether you're in a GUI application or the command-line.
Is it that the super key is not available on every computer? Or are these shortcuts protected by some sort of a copyright? Kinto seems to work by intercepting signals and reinterpreting them, then why not have the X keyboard component recompiled with a macOS keymap? I'm not at all knowledgeable in this area, so may be missing some very obvious challenges to doing so.
When I left Mac 8 years or so it was quite the opposite:
- home and end depended on application, the only one that worked consistently was ctrl - e and ctrl - a but they didn't work with shift so select to end of line was hit and miss
- one of the shortcuts that sometimes worked was cmd - left, unfortunately that was mapped to go-back-one-page in Safari. Kknd of annoying when you try to select a sentence in a form and end up losing all your carefully crafted edits.
- fn button in the place where ctrl is supposed to be, but only on laptop and small keyboards, not on the full size one. Not remappable (I understand this is fixed now).
I struggled with that machine for three years. After that I realized that Macs are perfect - for Mac people, not for Linux peasants like me.
Some applications take you to the top of the page with Home, some take you to the beginning of the line.
And thankfully, the Safari bug/inconsistency has been fixed. In all the major browsers on macos now, CMD+left will behave like "beginning of line" when you're in a text box.
I feel your struggle though, as someone who frequently has to / chooses to use Win/Linux, I don't think I'll ever end the fight against the shortcut patterns that have been ingrained in my hands.
- home/end: start/end of line
- Ctrl + home/end: start/end of file
- Ctrl + Shift + home/end: corresponding selection
- Ctrl + left/right arrows: word movement
- Ctrl + Shift + left/right arrows: corresponding word selection
- Ctrl + a: select all
- Alt + 1/2/3/...: switch between tabs in Chrome and VSCode where I tested it, don't know if it is working in ALL apps, for example it does not work on alacritty+tmux (where I spend most of my time) for obvious reasons.
I don't know about the consistency, but some of these make more sense semantically, like Alt+1/2/3 - "alternate to a different tab".
I use AutoKey for Terminal so that it works like Terminal in Mac OS X: Copy and paste and other Application shortcuts do not require using a shift key. Alt+C is the kill key (control-c) and all the rest of the Alt keys work like control keys in the terminal.
And yes, despite the non-trivial amount of tweaking and customization, I could never achieve the same level outside of Mac OS X.
That behaviour predates native tabs on the Mac, historically it even predates Safari and other browsers with tabs, I believe.
⌘1,2,3 in Safari for a long time selected favourites in the favourites bar. There is still a setting to still do that. I use it for useful bookmarklets.
Chrome: - Shift+Home/End selects to the start/end of the entire textarea. - Home/End first scrolls the textarea, if it is not, if it is already scrolled (this is double weird if you are somewhere down in the textarea, press home, it scrolls you to the top, press home again, it scrolls you back to where you were with the cursor on beginning of the line, then it goes to the start/end of the line as expected.
Safari: - Home/End only scroll the page, have no effect in textarea, - Shift+Home/End selects to the start/end of the textarea.
Also, I can't get insert to work in none of my IDEs (pycharm, vscode)
If anyone knows of a way to rebind Alt+left/right to mimic the behavior, please give me a shout out. I’ve tried to reproduce with remapping to Home/End but I’ve found it really inconsistent.
I set them as the Message Of The Day in my .zshrc (or .bashrc if you don't use zsh) until I memorized them. <c-f> is genric formatting for hotkeys, where c stands for control and you type "f" at same time.
IMPORTANT: For these to be level extremely effective you MUST REMAP your caps lock key to a control key. System Prefs > Keyboard > Modifier Keys button at bottom right
Imagine you want to go up 2 lines to edit a HN comment. You could move your right hand to arrow key, or you can simply press caps with your pinky and type "p" with your other pinky. So much faster! Now you can see why these are so effective, and are really my favorite.Note that as you start to use these you will be pleased to see they apply in a lot of applications. For example, type command+L in chrome to jump to the address bar and highlight it, now type "news" in the address bar. The autocomplete dropdown will pop up. Now type control+n (readline move down) and you can scroll through the list.
I'm obsessed with optimizations and efficiency and the 2 things mentioned above are the absolute gems. Also, I highly recommend: https://medium.com/vunamhung/set-a-blazingly-fast-keyboard-r...
`0` is a little to fast for me so I prefer speed `1` and it's perfect.
Readline refers to the GNU readline library [1]
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline
Deleted Comment
For in gnome-tweak-tool it is under "Keyboard & Mouse".
Note you can also set your command-line editing key to vi[m] also with "set -o vi". See https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/30454/advantages-of...
Cursor keys came with the numeric keypad; IIRC, control keys debuted with “Saratoga”, the extended keyboard in 1987 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#Apple_Extende... )
The shell reminder is a neat idea too; thanks for sharing that!
My Air has a JIS keyboard, so the control key is where your caps lock is. Most of my keyboards are configured this way (either physically or in software); on those that aren't, I use my opposing palm to press ctrl. I can't imagine using a Mac with flat keys and no right control =(
Because I make lots of use of control, I usually map Right Command to Right Control, so I can easily thumb control, command or option at practically any time.
Backspacing however can be done by word by using c-w to delete back by word. Unfortunately this hotkey only works in terminal I think, so you'd have to do option+backspace in chrome, etc.
on Big Sur this also hovers an arrow next to the menu item, this is what it looks like:
https://twitter.com/__tosh/status/1291712410437459968
Which is why for German keyboards, Apple made ⇧⌘/ the Search shortcut.
Which also makes no sense. Because surprise, we can’t use / either without pressing Shift at the same time.
Oh, the burden of an ÄÖÜ-bearing language.
Not arguing, but I think I don't understand the point. Also on a QWERTY-keyboard, ? requires ⇧. In fact, ⌘⇧/ and ⌘⇧? not only have the same effect, but are literally just different ways of describing exactly the same keypress. If you need ⇧ to access a key, but ⇧ is already included in the combination, then what's the problem?
(Not just menu items, but any series of actions involving mouse clicks and keystrokes.)
[0] https://keysmith.app
Disclaimer: I made this, haven't officially launched but I thought you might find it useful. If you do check it out, I'd love to hear your feedback (especially things that aren't clear, or objections to trying it based on the website) and would be happy to gift you a license if you'd like.
Deleted Comment
Am I using it "wrong"? Should I only use maxed windows or only desktop un-maxed windows and not both at the same time? I've googled this multiple times and found little help.
Not the same behavior as Alt-Tab, but together with Command+Tab it works well.
If you hold Command down after doing Command+Tab, you can also use "~" and "Tab" to select the app to the left or right in the list of recent apps.
Yes, but not properly, with memory ... C-Tab (like we expect, everywhere) will let you rapidly cycle back and forth between the two apps you are using - no matter where they are/were in the stack when you first C-Tab'd over.
However, C-` forces you to move through the entire stack for every switch. If your app-window is eight windows away, you need to go 16 spaces/slots to switch back and forth.
This has always been the case and, IMO, is actually a bug. It suggests that Apple employees don't use their systems like this because they wouldn't put up with it for one day if they did.
And, I just confirmed my suspicion: if you want this behavior, go to System Preferences > Mission Control, and check the box for "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for an application". With that unchecked macOS behaves the way you're describing; with it checked it behaves the way I'm describing.
I am unaware of any key combination that can restore a minimized window, or restore focus to a full screen window. Surly they exist though, so if anyone here knows what they are please do tell.
However, it seems it may not support the latest MacOS builds. Actually I just checked their Twitter page and saw they said it supports Mojave, so maybe it does.
Beyond cmd-tab working sensibly, you also get the advantage of not having annoying sliding animations when switching maximized windows. You can mitigate the animation somewhat for full-screen windows in accessibility options (it’s an effect of a “Reduce animations” checkbox or something like that) but it only turns it from sliding to a faster fade — there’s no way to make it instantaneous like non-full-screen window switching is.
Switching between tabs in a web browser is a very similar UX problem - and browsers got it right. Imagine that you would have to switch tabs in your browser using like you switch between windows in Mac OS. It sounds horrible. And the W95 style task bar is even better than browser tab bar because it's at the bottom of the screen so you don't have to position the cursor vertically.
Famously, MS managed to bungle that by putting a pixel of dead space at the bottom of the screen.
In the end, third party apps mostly fixed the problem for me. Hyperswitch (https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch) for switching between windows instead of apps and uBar (https://brawersoftware.com/products/ubar) for minimizing and maximizing apps by clicking their icon in the task bar.
I hope this helps.
You have to hold down the "alt" key to when switching to minimised apps to bring them forward:
cmd+tab - [find window] - hold down alt - release all keys - will bring it forward.
Crazily annoying behaviour
https://manytricks.com/witch/
This is something what you may or may not know as Workspace from Windows or KDE but on steroids.
How virtual screens are handled by the OS is different story. As a user of ungodly discussing i3 tailing manager I can only say, problems you described I personally consider as terrible design and putting look over functionality.
Basically this looks like OS X do care only for current screen if it's full screen or for any screen if it's not. What's inconsistent (terrible UX) and hard to use (also terrible UX).
Maybe I misunderstand you.
My Touch Bar even froze up the other day, though that was almost the first time it's happened in my 3 years of using 3 generations of Touch Bar MBPs. Long live the keyboard, and I hope Apple phases out the Touch Bar soon.
For the vast majority of users, the shortcuts we all know and love might as well not exist.
>About 90 per cent of computer users don't use CTRL-F to search for a word - as they don't know such a keyboard shortcut exists, a Google survey found. The results stunned Google's Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness, Dan Russell.
"I think we just all assume that we all know it, but no one actually does."
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/only-one-in-10-know-what-c...
This specific audience is exactly the wrong group to ask about the utility of the touch bar, since we are in the tiny minority who find traditional function keys to be useful.
From Feb 15, 2010:
"Suddenly, the two worlds collided. The tech savvy ran head-on into the tech illiterate and mockery and disbelief started to overtake confusion as the general tone..."
"While we mock those users, the simple fact is they haven't necessarily failed, something failed them. With all of our talk about the semantic Web and search engine optimization and tailoring search results to the individual user, there are thousands upon thousands of users performing the same simple search and following the same wrong road. If this were a standard traffic sign misdirecting this many people, it would have been pulled down long ago."
// via readwriteweb.com: https://web.archive.org/web/20100215124750/http://www.readwr...
Cars, games, and computers in general are examples of products that improve in value more rapidly as users learn how to use them as apposed to trying to cater to the least knowledgeable users. Computer games in particular often do a good job of teaching users about features incrementally.
I find Google/Gmail also have advanced shortcuts that stem from unix style, and I could not imagine not being able to use J/K to rapidly select lots of email messages for bulk actions.
I enabled this on my parents account, and years later they still are mousing through each message individually, as if I never showed them how to do it.
Even copy/paste shortcuts elude them.
So they'd have to put significant effort into it (to change the architecture to make it run on the new chip together with the system). I think they would do some major changes to it in this case.
Or they can phase it out and say it paved the way for the new arm macs and that it is no longer needed (and keep the face, not admitting that it was a failure). Especially so if the 1st Apple silicon Macbook gen is already touch based.
I hope they get rid of the Touch Bar during the transition. There were no WWDC sessions about it either.
Here's one use I found that I like: I sometimes work in the sunlight and want to switch to Light theme. I'm not aware of a nice convenient way to just toggle Light/Dark, so I found someone's instructions on how to bind a script that does that to a slot in the Touch Bar. Could that have been a keyboard shortcut? Sure, but I appreciate this option - kind of cool.
I've deleted all buttons except volume control and mute on mine, and I still end up inadvertently hitting mute sometimes when typing numbers and symbols.
I wish it had a few features to improve the experience:
- ability to lock an app. It would be nice to have zoom controls available like unmute when I don't have zoom window active
- hard buttons, with led screens. This would make things like debugging easier where I need to hit the "step over" button repeatedly
- easier customization without paid apps or scripting. I can only change a few defaults around
I’d buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is silly. You’d think every default English layout would be fairly good for writing English, but I’ve not seen one nearly as good as Apple’s. You can use AltGr or US International, but they’re both much worse for general-purpose English writing.
Why other operating systems have’s stolen their alt/option-based typing layout is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close for composing English-language text. Certainly no other default layout.
[EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it if it's a disaster...):
• Bullets.
— m-dashes.
90°
Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my French is garbage).
Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥?
¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry)
∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on.
Straßburg
And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year, I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming. Every other OS, please just copy this layout for your default English keyboard.
Just as good is the way Apple handles diacritics. You type a prefix keystroke for the diacritic, then follow it with the letter that's being modified: ö is <option-u, o>, ï is <option-u, i>, è is <option-grave, e>.
Most of the prefixes have easy-to-remember mnemonics: umlaut is <option-u>, grave is <option-grave>, tilde is <option-n> (for eñe, I suppose), but even hunting down these prefixes is fairly discoverable. After typing the prefix, a placeholder character is displayed in the text box showing the mark you've just entered, something like: ̲̈.
Then:
- <escape> or moving the cursor with an arrow key enters the diacritic as standalone character (e.g. ¨ is <option-u, escape>).
- <backspace> deletes the diacritic.
- A character that takes the diacritic enters the modified character.
- A character that does not usually take the diacritic enters the diacritic and the unmodified character (e.g. <option-n, 5> yields ˜5).
You turn it on and off with "Windows key-space".
Gnome/GNU/Linux provides a compatibility layer that isn't as good as macOS's emacs bindings.
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System....
M-b and M-f work sometimes too, but these two get intercepted for ∫ and ƒ respectively in Slack, Firefox, etc.