Mac keyboard shortcuts By pressing certain key combinations, you can do things that normally need a mouse, trackpad, or other input device. To use a keyboard shortcut, press and hold one or more modifier keys and then press the last key of the shortcut. Keyboard shortcuts are a brilliant time-saver; it's much easier to tap two or three keys at once than to go hunting through nested menus. But shortcuts depend on knowledge and muscle memory.
Is there no keyboard shortcut for something you do regularly? That’s annoying, but here’s the good news: on your Mac you can add one easily, without the need for extra software.
There’s not much you can do with your mouse that you can’t do faster with the right keyboard shortcut, but sometimes there simply isn’t one. If there’s a shortcut-less menu item you use every day, here’s how you can assign it some keystrokes and get stuff done faster.
Creating A Keyboard Shortcut
I’ll walk you through this simple process while creating a keyboard shortcut for that thing bloggers use to cross out text strikethrough in my favourite Markdown editorLightpaper Is A Free Tabbed Markdown Editor For MacLightpaper Is A Free Tabbed Markdown Editor For MacStill using Microsoft Word to write for the web? You're doing it wrong.Read More.
For this to work the item you want to trigger needs to be in the menu, but without a keyboard shortcut. Here’s what that looks like:
You can see the relevant keyboard shortcuts to the right of Strong, Emphasize and Underline – but Strikethrough is forgotten. Let’s fix that.
Shortcut For Search In Google
https://yellowuni422.weebly.com/blog/text-expansion-for-mac. Head to your Mac’s System Preferences (you can find it by hitting the Apple logo at top-left, then clicking “System Preferences”), then click Keyboard:
Click the Shortcuts tab, then click App Shortcuts – the bottom option in the left pane.
This will likely be empty for you – for me it includes some shortcuts I made so my Mac can read any textYour Mac Can Read Any Text To You, Here’s HowYour Mac Can Read Any Text To You, Here’s HowWhether you want to hear an article while you do something else or want another voice to read your writing back to you for proofreading purposes, OS X comes with everything you need.Read More. Go ahead and click the “+” button to create your keyboard shortcut.
Pick the Application you’d like this shortcut to apply to – you also can pick All Applications, if you want. Type the exact name of the menu item in the “Menu Title” field.
Finally, you need to pick your keyboard shortcut. Make sure the key combination you want isn’t already taken by opening your program and testing it out. If something happens, that shortcut is already assigned – if nothing happens and you hear a warning sound, the shortcut is available.
Click Add when you’ve got everything set the way you want it. The change will take affect immediately:
You can now use your new keyboard shortcut, so give it a spin. If it doesn’t work, check again for duplicate shortcuts. It can be tricky: in my above example, “CMD S” seemed like an obvious choice – until I remembered that’s the shortcut for saving. Duh.
Creative Uses
Creating shortcuts is all well and good, but what could you actually use this for? Here are a few ideas.
- Your browser probably has a bookmarks menu – meaning you can create keyboard shortcuts for going straight to your favourite bookmarks. I couldn’t get this to work for Firefox, but Safari and Chrome worked perfectly.
- Create a “Turn On Shuffle” shortcut for iTunes, to trigger a mix instantly.
- Create a “Zoom” shortcut for All Applications – now you can make any window bigger, without using your mouse to click the green “+” button.
I’m sure you guys can think of many more – let us know what keyboard shortcuts you’ve added in the comments below.
Oh, and if you haven’t yet you should learn your keyboard shortcutsLearn Your Keyboard Shortcuts Using CheatSheet [Mac]Learn Your Keyboard Shortcuts Using CheatSheet [Mac]If you're growing tired of constantly moving your hand back and forth from your mouse or trackpad to the keyboard in order to launch or quit an application, pause iTunes playing, or copy or paste..Read More using CheatSheet. It’s an app that shows you a list of all the shortcuts offered in the menu for any Mac app. Enjoy!
Explore more about: Keyboard, Mac Menu Bar.
- The hard part seems to be the 'Type the exact name of the menu item in the “Menu Title” field.' step.. but there's not really much info here on how/what to type - any chance of an edit or follow up on what needs to be written here? Shortcut for text insert in pdf mac.
- I thought exactly the same. This is not well explained.
What you write in the 'Menu Title' field is what is written on that very button (not the dropdown menu's name) in the top menu bar (the one that starts with an ? and houses clock, battery etc to the right).
For example, if you want to open the 'About this mac' window with cmd+option+q, you write 'About This Mac' (with capitalisation) in the 'Menu Title' field.
If you'd like to quit Chrome with ctrl+shift+q instead, you write in the field: 'Quit Google Chrome' (you find the button under the dropdown menu named 'Chrome' in bold).
I hope to clear things up for new mac users, as myself! :)
Shortcut For Search In Text Macro
Active2 years, 8 months ago
In Visual Studio—my main squeeze for many years—I can press Ctrl+F to immediately search for the identifier or string that my text caret is touching, or else the currently selected text if I have a selection. I can press Ctrl+Shift+F to search the whole project, solution, or other file sets. I like this.
![Text Text](/uploads/1/3/3/8/133849041/628752390.png)
In Xcode 3.*—my main squeeze in recent years—I could press Cmd+Opt+F to immediately search for the currently selected text and Cmd+Opt+Shift+F (a bit of a handful, but workable), to search throughout the project. I liked this a bit less than the VS approach because I first had to select some text, then search for it, rather than the IDE automatically picking up the current identifier for me if I hadn't selected anything. But it was fine.
Now in Xcode 4 I notice that there is a Cmd+E shortcut that makes Xcode 'Use Selection for Find.' But it.. well it sucks bad. All it does--apparently--is to copy the current selection and paste it into the find box. It doesn't show the find box, so if the find box isn't currently shown then Cmd+E has no visible effect. Cmd-E does not actually invoke the search--it only copies the text. So now searching for an identifier becomes a three step process: select the identifier, press Cmd+E, press Cmd+F (or Cmd+Shift+F for project-wide search).
![Shortcut For Search In Text Mac Shortcut For Search In Text Mac](/uploads/1/3/3/8/133849041/309349423.jpg)
IMO, Xcode 4's three-step process is worse than Xcode 3's two-step process, which is worse than Visual Studio's one-step process.
My question: In light of this falling UI efficiency along with recent international events, is the world just going downhill and soon all will end in a fiery apocalypse in which the few remaining humans will be forced to retype War and Peace each time they want to search for an identifier?
OldPeculier
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2 Answers
ughoavgfhw offered the correct answer (above). Use Cmd+E on the
selected text
to begin searching with that text. Then immediately type Cmd+Shift+F to search the whole project for all instances of the text hit enter. This is quite quick, consistent, and sensible. It's not as immediate as Visual Studio's single-stroke Find/Find-in-Files—Xcode requires two strokes rather than one—but personally the extra step doesn't bother me.
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OldPeculierOldPeculier6,13888 gold badges4040 silver badges6767 bronze badges
Late to party but someone might benefit:
I use the free BetterTouchTool and define a custom shortcut for missing or awkward Xcode shortcuts. You can attach multiple actions to your custom shortcuts, I have assigned Cmd+E - Cmd+Shift+F - Enter to middle mouse button, it lets me search the selected text in workspace with a single click. You can assign the same actions to a keyboard shorcut though I like mouse buttons better for this task because I also do the text selection with mouse.
ps: BTT gives you the option to select in which application your shortcut will apply or you can make your custom shortcuts global, which I also find handy.
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