I recently moved to macOS from Windows and even though the experience is similar, I had to go through the process of memorizing the keyboard shortcuts all over again. If you’re struggling to figure out the keyboard shortcuts on a Mac as well then I have a list of essential keyboard shortcuts that you should know right now. Let’s begin.

• ‎Keyboard Shortcuts Pro. If you use mac on life.This app helper you great job and quickly. Mastering a few crucial Mac keyboard shortcuts will make using your Apple computer easier and much more efficient. Cutting your reliance on your mouse will help you work more quickly Features: - iCloud.
• A drop-down menu will appear under the newly added 'Launch Application' action.Image:Set a Keyboard Shortcut to Open Mac Apps Step 14.jpg 7 Click the drop-down menu.
• With these keyboard shortcuts, your Mac will feel more responsive than ever and you’ll see yourself accomplish digital tasks with newfound speed. Consider some app-specific shortcuts.
• BetterTouchTool: Turn Your Trackpad Gestures into Hotkeys. BetterTouchTool lets you map trackpad gestures to system actions, including custom keyboard shortcuts. Its core functionality is simple: select an app to configure (or “Global” for all apps), add a gesture, and then tell it what you want that gesture to do.

First, click the Apple icon in the upper-left corner, and then select “System Preferences.” In “System Preferences,” click “Keyboard,” and then click the “Shortcuts” tab. Click “App Shortcuts” in the sidebar. Click the plus sign (+) to add a new shortcut. A new window containing a drop-down menu and two text fields will appear.

I won’t include the keyboard shortcuts that are similar across Windows, macOS, or even Linux such as copy, paste, new tab, etc. Instead, I’ll focus on some of the lesser-known keyboard shortcuts that made my workflow streamlined and less dependent on the mouse. You can also create your own key shortcuts that would work specifically to your requirements or install Hotkey EVE to memorize all the shortcuts.

1. Lock the Screen

It’s always a good practice to lock your computer when leaving the workstation and unlike Windows, it’s not a simple WIN+L on macOS. You have to press CMD + CTRL + Q to lock the screen without logging out of your account.

2. Turn the Display OFF

If you’re not worried about someone snooping in your computer but still want to hide the Display screen, you can turn the display off without even locking the screen. Simply press CTRL + SHIFT + EJECT on the keyboard to turn the display off. If you’re using a laptop and can’t find the eject button, the CTRL + SHIFT + POWER would also work.

3. Copy the screenshots to the clipboard

I take a lot of screenshots and I mean a lot. On Windows, I used an app called Lightshot to quickly capture screenshots and copy it to the clipboard with one click. macOS has an intuitive Screenshot tool built-in which can be accessed by pressing CMD + SHIFT + 3, CMD + SHIFT + 4, and CMD+ SHIFT + 4 + SPACE. These shortcuts come in handy but I still have to go to the desktop and copy it manually if I wish to send it to someone.

You can eliminate this long process by adding the CTRL modifier key to the above combinations and it would copy the screenshot to the clipboard after capturing it. You can then simply paste it anywhere. The shortcut keys to directly copying screenshot are CTRL + CMD + SHIFT + 3, CTRL + CMD + SHIFT + 4, and CTRL + CMD + SHIFT + 4 + SPACE.

4. Start Screen Recording

If you’re running macOS Mojave or later then you can begin recording by simply pressing CMD + SHIFT + 5. Earlier you had to open the Quick Time Player, Navigate to the Menu bar and then start recording. It is really intuitive and makes the work a lot easier.

5. Create a new folder

I often have to organize the files on my system and putting the files in their respective folders is a repetitive task. macOS makes it a little easier where you can select multiple items and press CTRL + CMD + N to create a new folder, it moves the files to that newly created folder automatically. Sweet.

6. Go to Desktop

Windows had a quick shortcut to go to the desktop by pressing WIN+D. You can also do the same thing on a Mac by pressing CMD + F3 or CMD + exposé. It is not exactly the same as taking you to the desktop but you can still access all the files from the desktop.

7. Simulate Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys

When you scroll long webpages, the home, end, page up and page down keys come in handy but most macOS laptops don’t have it. However, you can still simulate the Home Key by pressing the FN + LEFT ARROW key on the keyboard. Similarly, you can get End key by pressing FN + RIGHT ARROW, Page Up by FN + UP ARROW, and Page Down by pressing FN+DOWN ARROW.

8. Forward Delete

Just like the home and End keys, MacBook doesn’t have a delete key, well it does but it works as a backspace key but labeled as ‘delete’. This shortcut may be in a very small niche but I use both backspace key and delete key as it translates easily to my workflow and many people who code would know how convenient it is to have it handy on your computer.

This shortcut is known as forward delete and can be simulated by pressing FN + DELETE or CTRL + D.

9. Switch between two instances of the same app

I often keep the Incognito mode open on Google Chrome during work and switching back and forth between the same instance of an app requires several clicks of the mouse. You can quickly toggle between the instances of the same app by pressing the CTRL + DOWN ARROW key and then selecting one of the active windows. Alternatively, you can also press CMD+` to toggle between the active windows.

10. Precisely Control Volume

It really bugged me for a while when I found out that you only get 16 levels of volume adjustment on a Mac. Considering every OS I’ve used has at least 50 levels of volume for precise adjustments so a simple Google search revealed that you can actually have 64 levels of volume control on every mac. You have to press OPTION+SHIFT+VOLUME to finely adjust it.

The same is also true for brightness as well, you can press OPTION+SHIFT+BRIGHTNESSto precisely adjust the brightness of the display of your MacBook.

Best Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac

These were some of the keyboard shortcuts that I use daily. As I find using a mouse exhausting, these key shortcuts navigating the computer much easier. There are, however, many other shortcuts that I use but not that frequently because I feel those might be too specific for my workflow. If you want to share your favorite shortcuts, comment them below or tweet me at Technarok.

The function keys on your Mac’s keyboard are probably the least used of all. In fact, they’re so underused that by default when you press a function key it doesn’t act as a function key at all. Instead, it performs its other duty, whether that’s media playback control, brightness adjustment, or invoking Launchpad or Mission Control. To use a function key as a function key, you must hold down the fn button at the bottom left of your keyboard.

Change the behavior of function keys on your Mac

Nevertheless, function keys can be very useful if you customize them to do what you want them to do. Here’s how to create some of the best time-saving function key shortcuts for your Mac.

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Use function keys without pressing fn

Mac On Screen Keyboard Shortcut

First thing first, let’s make function keys functional again:

Keyboard Shortcuts For Mac Computers

1. To reverse the default behavior of function keys, go to the Apple Menu and select System Preferences
2. Click on the Keyboard pane
3. Choose the Keyboard tab
4. Check the box next to “Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys”

Customize function key shortcuts with preset actions

The easiest shortcut you can make is re-assigning function keys themselves to more useful actions:

1. In System Preferences, choose the Keyboard pane
2. Click on the Shortcuts tab
3. Choose one of the categories on the left-hand side
4. Select a preset from the list
5. If the preset already has a shortcut assigned, click on it and tap the function key you want to use
6. If it doesn’t have a shortcut assigned already, click Add Shortcut and tap the function key

If the function key you’ve chosen is already assigned to something else, you’ll see a yellow warning triangle appear next to it and the original shortcut. You will have to alter one of them to proceed.

Create function key shortcuts with custom actions

Now, to actually create shortcut combinations, do the following:

1. Launch the app for which you want to add a shortcut
2. Go to the menu that hosts the command you want to create a shortcut for and make a note of the precise name of the command
3. Go to the Keyboard pane in System Preferences
4. Select the Shortcuts tab
5. Choose App Shortcuts
6. Click the plus button
7. From the All Applications drop down menu, choose the app for which you want to add the shortcut
8. In the Menu Title box, type the name of the command exactly as it appears in the application’s menu
9. Type the function key shortcut in the Keyboard Shortcut box

Now, whenever you’re in that app and tap the assigned function key, it will perform the specified command. For example, if you set up a shortcut to save a document as a template in Pages and assign it to the F1 key, then when you’re using Pages and press F1, the current document will be saved as a template.

If you want to go further than customizing function keys, there are several apps that can help you work faster and become even more productive.

Quick Tips: make your own shortcuts to work faster and more efficiently

Expand text with Rocket Typist

Apps won't open on mac book pro. If you find yourself typing the same phrases over and over again in email messages or documents, Rocket Typist is your holy grail. It allows you to store organized snippets of text and recall them with custom abbreviations.

For example, instead of typing “Hello, my name is John Appleseed, I am a developer interested in…” you could just type “hmn” and Rocket Typist will fill out the rest. You could also find the pre-saved phrase in the app itself and paste it in that way.

Rocket Typist shows how minimal but productive a text expansion app can be.

Rocket Typist supports macros for things like time and date so you can be sure the current time and date will be placed in your document. And you can share snippets using AirDrop or Mail.

Mac Shortcuts Keyboard

Search intelligently with Lacona

Lacona is a bit like a keyboard version of Siri for those of us who don’t like talking to our Mac. Press the keyboard shortcut to invoke its text input bar and type a command, such as “search Amazon for bluetooth speakers” or “schedule lunch with Carol at 1pm tomorrow,” or even “play Born to Run.” As you type, Lacona will show a list of suggestions beneath the window, and you can use the arrow keys to navigate to and select the one you want.

Keyboard Shortcuts Mac Os

Get a keyboard version of Siri

Automate your search on Mac with Lacona, an app that interprets what you’re typing and does what you’re asking for. Like Siri, only with text.

Lacona can also perform actions like copy, move, and rename on files in the Finder and activate system events like Empty Trash and Shutdown, it can create reminders and make calls, quit, activate and relaunch apps, and so much more, all by typing in its text bar. The app can even hook into third-party services, like IFTTT, so you can control those just by typing as well.

Create custom gestures with BetterTouchTool

Apple’s built-in gestures for the Trackpad and Magic Mouse are great, as far as they go. With BetterTouchTool (BTT) though you can take them much much further. The app allows you to create completely custom gestures and assign them to actions, which can be either global or application specific.

In addition, BetterTouchTool allows you to create custom keyboard sequences to trigger actions, and has its own built-in clipboard manager and screenshot tool. So you could, for example, set up a gesture to take a screenshot and then edit it right in BetterTouchTool instead of saving it to the Desktop.

Save multiple text snippets with Paste

Paste is a clipboard manager that allows you to store multiple items for pasting later. It then categorizes each copied item and places it in its own section of the clipboard, which you can easily change. Moreover, Paste syncs your clipboard in iCloud, meaning you can access its pinboard on multiple devices.

To paste an item you’ve copied into a document, just use Paste’s keyboard shortcut to view the pinboard, find the snippet of text, image, URL, or whatever else you’ve copied, copy it and then paste it into your file.

As you can see, your Mac’s keyboard can be customized in different ways. By creating shortcuts for function keys as well as combinations of other keys, you can start working much more quickly and save time. And using the apps listed above, all of which are available to download for free on Setapp, you can take your productivity to another level altogether.

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

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What Do Mac App Keyboard Shortcuts Do