Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you some major
keyboard shortcuts that you may not be using.
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So by major keyboard shortcuts I mean shortcuts that require the Command key and a single letter,
number, or symbol key on the keyboard. For instance you probably use Command C and Command
V for copy and paste. You probably use Command F for Find. You probably use Command A to select
All and Command Q to Quit. But there are forty-nine keys on the keyboard
that you can combine with Command for major shortcuts. So what are some of the other
ones? It turns out some of them are pretty useful but a lot of us just don't use them.
So let's start off with one I use all the time but I know a lot of Mac users don't use. That's
Command W to close a tab or window. If you look in the File Menu in most apps you'll
find Command W. In this case in Safari it's Close Tab because I have multiple tabs that are open.
So if I use Command W here it closes that one tab and now if I look in the
File Menu you can see Command W has switched to Close Window since there's no tab to close.
I use Command W all the time to close tabs or windows and it works in just about any app.
Whenever somebody talks about clicking the Red Button at the top left hand corner of the window
I know what they're talking about but I actually never use that red button. I always use Command W.
Now another shortcut you'll find in just about every single app is the one to get
to Preferences for that app. A lot of us are used to going to the App Menu here at the top
and then looking for Preferences. But Command and Comma is almost always the keyboard shortcut for
this. So if you get used to using that you never have to go up to that menu to find Preferences.
Now a lot of us know that you can use Command Tab to bring up the App Switcher and switch to other
apps. But if you have multiple windows open in the same app you could switch between those windows.
Let's open up a new window here in Safari. You could see now I've got two windows. So to switch
between these I'll use Command and the back tic key or the kind of opposite of apostrophe. On
US keyboards it's the key to the left of the one. So use Command and that and you'll switch between
windows in the same app. That's pretty universal for any app that has multiple windows open.
Now out of all these I'm going to talk about this is the one that I think most people already use
but a lot of people still don't. So I want to mention it. It's Command H to Hide the app. You
can find that by going to the App Menu and you'll see Hide and the name of the app as Command H.
Use that and it hides the entire app. It's still running. It just gets rid of the windows so you
don't see them anymore. But if you were to use the App Switcher to switch back to it
the windows just reappear. It's just hides all the app's windows. Far too many people use the yellow
button or Command M to minimize a window into the Dock or they Quit the app entirely when it's
much better to just use Command H to hide the app especially if you plan on going back to it soon.
Memory management on Macs is excellent. So if you're not using an app and it's hidden it's not
going to be using much memory. It's perfectly fine to keep apps hidden for hours at a time
so you can get back to them quickly, have the same windows open in the same positions
and continue to work there. I regularly have apps like Mail, Safari, Notes, Reminders, and others
open running all the time just hidden. I switch back to them whenever I need them.
One of the apps that most people use all day long, even though you might not think of it as an app,
is the Finder. There are some major keyboard shortcuts that a lot of people don't use
and really should all the time. For instance, one is to use Command and Up Arrow to go up. So for
instance if I were to go down into this folder here and I want to go back up just Command Up
Arrow takes you up a level. Another one is when you do Finder searches. You do Finder searches
all the time and when you get the search results you can double click on the file to open it,
you could see the path here at the bottom if you want. But in a search result you could
use Command R and it will jump to the location of that file which a lot of times is exactly
what we want to do when we search for a file. The same thing works in Spotlight. Select a
document or file in Spotlight and use Command R it will jump to the location of that file.
Now there are, of course, four different views in the Finder. You could switch two them here in
the Menu Bar. You can switch between Icon View, List View, Column or Gallery View. It's really
useful to be able to quickly switch views when doing different things in the Finder. But it's
a hassle to always go up here and select one so a lot of people like to stick with one view. But the
keyboard shortcuts to switch views are pretty simple. You could see them under View here,
Command 1, 2, 3, 4. So if you get used to using those keyboard shortcuts it's really quick and
easy to switch between the views. To use the one that makes the most sense at that moment.
Another keyboard shortcut I want to mention in the Finder is if you go to View and there's Show
View Options which seems to be a really obscure command all the way down at the bottom of the
View menu. But if you use the keyboard shortcut Command J it's easy to get to. This gives you a
ton of great options to make each Finder view better for you. It changes with each view. So
here I am in the Icon View and you could see my options. But if I switch to List View you
could see I have different options, different options in Column View and Gallery View as well.
Now my next three shortcuts involve Searching in Text Apps. So I'm going to use Pages but the
same thing works, say, in an app like TextEdit or just about any app that handles text. If you want
to search for something, of course, you can use Command F and type what you want to search and
search for that. But you can also select some text and use that for a search. If you look under Edit
and then Find you'll see that Command E is Use Selection for Find. So by using Command E whatever
you have selected goes into the Find View. But it doesn't do the Search. However, using Command G
will Find Next. So if you've already searched for something, whether it's using Command E at first
or you've typed something out, Command G will find the next one. So it's easy to go through an entire
document looking for something, hitting Command G over and over again. So let's give that a try.
For instance with this word selected here I'll do Command E to use that for the search. Then Command
G will find the next one. Another Command G will find the next one after that.
Now Command J in the Finder allows you to show the View options. But Command J in a Text App will
actually jump to whatever the selection is. So say I've gone somewhere and I've selected some text.
But now I've scrolled somewhere else, maybe to look something up and I want to jump
right back to where the cursor is. Command J will do that. Another useful thing in most situations
where you're typing text is to use Command T to bring up text options. So you could select some
text and of course you've got the Format Sidebar here in Pages. You've got tons of stuff here under
Format. But notice Command T is Show Fonts. You'll find the same things say in TextEdit. Do Command T
and it brings up this little set of text options which allows you to select things like the font,
the size, and a variety of different things here at the top depending upon what the app is capable
of. So if you're not sure where to find how to change something with some text try Command T to
bring up this control which will be universal between lots of different apps on the Mac.
So here's another one in Safari. You might know Command I in the Finder,
which brings up the Info window. But Command I does something different in Safari. In the
Menu Bar you'll find it hidden under File, Share, Email this Page. Command
I will do that. So if I use Command I here it will create a new email in my default email app.
The subject will be the name of the page and it will include the contents of the page
in the message. But I can change that in the Mail app to show the webpage, a pdf of the webpage, or
just a link to the webpage. So if you find you often have to email either links or the
contents of a webpage to somebody then Command I is definitely a shortcut you want to know.
Now I told you I was only going to show you keyboard shortcuts that use Command and one
other key. Well, I kind of lied because this last one actually requires the Shift key.
The shortcut is Command question mark but you need the shift key to turn the slash key into a
question mark. So Command Shift and then slash and it will bring up the Help Menu in the Menu Bar.
Now what's the big deal here. I mean most of the time we don't read the Help information in an app.
But searching in the Help Menu will actually show you menu commands. So, for instance, here in Pages
if I wanted to find superscript I may not know what menu it's under. But if I start typing you
could see it will find it and show me at the top. I can arrow down to it and it will actually then
point out exactly where that command is. In this case it's Format Font Baseline Superscript. But
I don't even have to navigate over to it to use it now. I can simply hit the Return key
and it will activate that menu item. So you can access any menu item in the Menu Bar by using
Command ? typing what the menu command is or at least enough letters to get you there
and use Return to activate it. In the meantime you can learn where the actual menu item is for
next time or even see what the keyboard shortcut is. Another thing you can do with this is by
activating this you can now use the arrow keys to go to the left and go to different menus and use
the other arrow keys to navigate around in here to activate any menu item without having to use the
mouse or trackpad. Technically Control and F2 or Control fn and F2, depending upon your settings,
will take you to the Apple Menu and you could do the same thing but it's much more reliable to use
Shift Command Slash to start with the Help Menu. That works almost everywhere all the time.
So I hope I've taught you a few new keyboard shortcuts that you may have not known before
and perhaps this will make you more productive. Thanks for watching.