Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com.
Today let's look at three very useful keyboard shortcuts that are actually turned off on
your Mac by default.
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So have you ever wanted to turn on Do Not Disturb, bring up the Notification Center,
or launch Launchpad using a keyboard shortcut.
Well, it's tricky to do those things because they really don't have specific menu items
where you can set a keyboard shortcut for that.
But there are actually reserved slots for keyboard shortcuts for those three things
already setup in System Preferences.
They are just turned off by default.
So let's go to System Preferences and then Keyboard and then Shortcuts.
Let's look at the very first one, Launchpad & Dock.
Right here we'll find our first shortcut.
Show Launchpad.
I would be nice to bring this up with a keyboard shortcut especially since you can launch an
app with the keyboard in Launchpad.
So if I click on Launchpad down here and I just type a few characters, like that, and
hit Return it will launch the app.
The only problem is that I can't bring up Launchpad with the keyboard.
I have to use the mouse and go over to it and click on it.
But here I can simply enable the keyboard shortcut by checking the box here.
Then setup a shortcut for it.
So since this launches apps let's use Control Command A to bring this up.
Now that that's set Control Command A brings up Launchpad and now I can just type some
letters, use the arrow keys if I want, hit Return and it launches the app just using
the keyboard.
In a minute I'll show you some other shortcuts you can use to launch Launchpad as well.
Now let's look under Mission Control and here are the other two I wanted to tell you about.
First, there's Show Notification Center.
So let's turn that on and let's set that to Control Command N for notifications.
Now when I use that you can see it brings up Notification Center on the right and another
one will dismiss it.
Now let's turn on the Do Not Disturb On/Off switch here and let's set this to Control
Command D. Now if you look at the upper right hand corner you'll see the Notifications,
those three lines there, if I use the shortcut you can see it turns On the Do Not Disturb
and it dims it.
Another one will just reset it to normal.
You can see the three lines there are no longer dimmed.
There are also trackpad gestures you can use to access two of these.
So, for instance, here under More Gestures we have one for Launchpad.
Pinch with thumb and three fingers.
If you have that turned on that's another way to use Launchpad.
You have to use your trackpad for that.
Not the keyboard.
Notifications Center also has one.
If you turn that one on if you swipe left from the right edge of the trackpad, not the
screen, with two fingers it will bring that up.
If you swipe right all the way to the right side of your trackpad you can dismiss it.
Now for turning on Do Not Disturb you can always just click here and drag down and then
you can turn it on.
But a shortcut for that is to just Option Click here to turn it On or Off.
The keyboard shortcuts for all of these, I think, are a lot easier.
Unfortunately if you don't have a trackpad but instead are using an Apple Mouse there's
no gesture for these.
But there is something else you can do.
You can use Hot Corners.
If you go to Mission Control and then click on Hot Corners you can set one of the four
Hot Corners to do either Show Notification Center or launch Launchpad.
So you can replace those two gestures with one of these.
A good tip is to not use just the Hot Corner by itself.
Let's say we want to move to the upper right hand corner to launch Launchpad but instead
of just moving there we can also say let's do that but with Control and Command held
down.
Just hold those keys down on your keyboard and you'll see these menu items change.
Then select.
Now Launchpad will only come up when we move the cursor there but also hold down the Control
and Command keys at the same time.
There are also some other kind of hidden commands you can look at on your Mac.
If you go to Keyboard and then Shortcuts and you go down to Services you're going to see
a list of all sorts of different services and keyboard shortcuts you can set to them.
Now it's going to depend on which apps you have and also if you've created any services
of your own say using Automator or Script Editor.
But some of them will be built into every Mac by default.
For instance here's one to launch Terminal and go directly to the current folder.
Here's another one for looking up the current selection in the dictionary.
So look through here and see what other keyboard shortcuts that you already have ready to go,
you just need to enable them with a checkbox and add a shortcut
for it.