Mac keyboard shortcuts are a quick and efficient way to execute various commands without ever needing to leave the keyboard to fiddle with a mouse or touchpad. If you master them, they’re one of.
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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, and you’ll undoubtedly impress your family, friends and co-workers to no end. You might even end up becoming the go-to Mac person in your office, and we all know how wonderful that will be.
Here are the top 10 Mac keyboard shortcut tricks you really need to memorize right now, whether you’re a Mac newbie or a veteran user who still uses the mouse for everything out of habit.
Top 10 Mac keyboard shortcuts
Ingredients:
- Any Mac running OS X
- Mac-compatible keyboard (has a Command key, not Windows)
Directions:
First up, take a look at the Mac keyboard in front of you to familiarize yourself with a few Mac-specific keys. How to do manual calculation in excel mac. The Command key has a special symbol (⌘) to help you recognize it, while the Option key can also say “alt” on it, a term borrowed from a Windows environment. Your keyboard may also have a Function key (fn) next to the Control key (which just bears its own name — “control”).
Many of these shortcuts have an equivalent menu item you’ll find at the top of your Mac’s screen. One way of finding new shortcuts is to look to the right of any menu item and see if a keyboard shortcut is listed.
Now that you’ve got a good idea of where to find these keys, let’s take a look at some great ways to use them. (In addition to writing out the instructions, we’ve also created a pair of videos to walk you through them in case you prefer to learn that way. You’ll find them at the bottom of this post.)
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Quit any Mac program
Command-Q: If you’re coming from a Windows computer, you might have gotten used to “X-ing out” of your applications by clicking on the X button at the top of any application window. In OS X, you close windows with the red X button (in the upper left of your window), but it will not quit the app. To fully exit out of any Mac program in OS X, you’ll need to use the Quit command with this shortcut, or click on the app menu, then choose Quit.
Close Mac windows quickly
Command-W, Option-Command-W: The first of these will close whatever active window you are using, while the second one will close all the windows in the currently active app (or Finder, which is also an app, really). These shortcuts will do the same thing as the Close Window option in the Finder and most other apps. Chrome, for example, delineates between Close Window (Command-W) and Close Tab (Command-Shift-W).
Open a new web browser tab on Mac
Command-T: Whether you’re in a web browser like Safari or Chrome or in the Finder itself, this keyboard shortcut will open a new tab for you. In Chrome, Command-Shift-T will open the most recently closed tab for you. Keep hitting this shortcut to open multiple tabs (or continue opening tabs in reverse chronological order in Chrome).
Quickly switch between Mac applications
Command-Tab, Command-~ : The first of these shortcuts will activate Mac OS X’s built-in application switcher, which will let you switch between active apps running on your Mac. Keep holding down the Command key and press Tab repeatedly to go to the next app from left to right. Use Command-~ (tilde, usually above the Tab key) to switch to running apps from right to left. Holding down the Command key and hitting Q will quit whatever program you are currently highlighting.
Cut, copy and paste on Mac
Command-X, Command-C, Command-V: These are three of the things I do most often in my writing life, so mousing up to the Edit menu in an app to choose these functions from a menu makes me cringe. Learn these three essential shortcuts (Command-X for cut, Command-C for copy and Command-V for paste — go figure), and you’ll save a ton of time every day.
Find something fast on your Mac
Command-F: Search is a massive part of any computer user’s workflow, from finding the right document to looking for a key word or phrase in Safari. To find something in the Finder, Safari or Chrome, or in a Pages or Word document, simply hit the Command-F key combination and a little window will show up where you can type in your search terms. Boom — you’ll find what you need.
Take Mac screenshots
Command-Shift-3, Command-Shift-4: Screenshots are a way of life in my daily work, and I’m willing to bet you’ve needed to take a quick capture of your screen at some point. Command-Shift-3 will take a picture of your entire Mac’s screen, from the upper left to the bottom right. Command-Shift-4 will turn your mouse cursor into a set of crosshairs (not unlike a sniper rifle sight) that you can then click and drag around any portion of your screen to capture only the relevant area. Pro tip: Tap the spacebar once to take a screenshot of a specific window, or hold the spacebar to move the selected area around without changing its dimensions.
Open Mac Finder folders
What Are The Manual Mouse Commands On A Mac Free
Command-Shift-A, Command-Shift-U, Command-Shift-D, Command-Shift-H: In the Finder, you’ll need to navigate to any number of common folders: Applications, Utilities, Desktop, and Home. Simply hit the Command key and then the first letter of each of these to go directly to them: Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Force quit a Mac app
Command-Option-Esc: If an app stops responding, you might need to force it to quit. You can do that with a right-click on the app icon in the Dock, but it’s even easier if you hit this keyboard shortcut. This will bring up the Force Quit dialog, which you can then use to kill that unresponsive app. You might need to Command-Tab your way out of an active frozen app first, or use Command + Shift + Option + Esc to quit the currently active app.
Hide Mac apps
Command-H, Command-Option-H: Doing something at work you shouldn’t be when your boss walks by? Whoops! It’s an easy fix to hit Command-H on your keyboard to hide the current active app. If you just need to declutter your view, Command-Option-H will hide all the other apps in the background, letting you focus on the one in front.
See top Mac keyboard shortcuts in action
The Cult of Mac how-to videos below will walk you through these shortcuts if you prefer to watch rather than read. We’ve broken up the top 10 into two easy parts. Here are the first five Mac keyboard shortcuts …
And here are five more:
Sometimes your Mac isn't running properly, so you need to reset the NVRAM and PRAM. Sometimes you need to boot in Recovery Mode in order to reinstall an OS or recover your hard drive via the internet. Whatever your needs, you can boot your Mac in a variety of modes in order to complete a task before startup; all you need to do is press some keys down and wait for the chime (unless you have a later MacBook Pro, in which case I'm sorry).
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Here are all the keyboard shortcuts you can use when starting up your Mac!
Safe mode: shift
Safe mode is a way of starting up your Mac that makes sure it performs certain checks and prevents certain software from loading or opening automatically. Here's what it does according to Apple:
- Verifies startup disk and tries to repair directory issues if needed
- Loads only required kernel extensions
- Prevents Startup Items and Login items from opening automatically
- Disables user-installed fonts
- Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files
How to start in Safe Mode
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold shift on your keyboard.
- Release the shift key when you see the login window.
You can leave safe mode by restarting your Mac without pressing any keys during startup.
Startup Manager: option (alt)
The Startup Manager lets you choose a different startup disk during boot. So if you have your Mac partitioned in order to run Windows or a macOS beta, for example, you can choose that startup disk instead of the default disk.
How to start the Startup Manager
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold the option key on your keyboard.
- Release the option key when you see the Startup Manager window.
- Select a startup disk.
- Click the arrow or press return on your keyboard.
Start up from an available external disk: C
You can start up your Mac from an available CD, DVD, or USB drive that contains a valid operating system for your Mac (you can also just use Startup Manager.
How to start up from an available external disk
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold the C key on your keyboard.
- Release the C key when you see the Startup Manager window.
- Select a startup disk.
- Click the arrow or press return on your keyboard.
Start up from Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnostics: D
If there are issues with your Mac that you think may be related to the hardware, you can run the Apple Hardware Test. You can run Apple Diagnostics once you think you've isolated the issue to a possible hardware issue.
How to start up from the Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnostics
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold the D key on your keyboard.
- Release the D key when you see the choices appear.
- Select Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnostics.
You can also hold option-D to start up from either utility over the internet.
Start up from a NetBoot server: N
Booting from a NetBoot server allows you to boot from a network, rather than a local hard disk or optical disk drive. Your Mac must have capable firmware in order to boot from a network.
How to start up from a NetBoot server
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold the N key on your keyboard.
- Release the N key when you see the choices appear.
- Select a network.
Reset the NVRAM and PRAM: option-command-P-R
Sometimes certain processes on your Mac just don't work. It can be any random issue from iCloud not allowing you to sign in, to certain apps just not opening. One of the first fixes you'll find on any forum is resetting the NVRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory). This is a small amount of memory that your Mac uses to store settings that it wants to access quickly.
If you're having an inexplicable issue with your Mac, this is a good place to start.
How to reset the NVRAM and PRAM on your Mac
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold command-option-P-R on your keyboard. You'll probably have to use both hands.
- Release the keys after about 20 seconds. If you have a Mac that plays a startup chime, you can release the keys after you heard it a second time.
You may have to go back into System Preferences and adjust settings like volume and display resolution to your liking, since they get reset when you reset the NVRAM.
Boot in Recovery Mode: command-R
Sometimes, as a last-ditch effort, you need to boot in Recovery Mode and either repair a disk or (NOOOOO!) reinstall macOS. You may also need to restore from a Time Machine backup. If any of that is the case, then here's what to do:
How to boot up your Mac in Recovery Mode
- Start up or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold command-R on your keyboard.
- Release the keys when you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe.
- Click an option.
- Click Continue.
Start up in single-user mode: command-S
If you're comfortable with UNIX, sometimes you may want to boot your Mac in single-user mode, which lets you try and isolate startup-related issues. You'll want to be an advanced user if you're considering this move.
How to boot up in single-user mode
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold command-S on your keyboard.
- Release the keys when you see white text on the screen.
Start up in target disk mode: T
Target disk files allows you to share files between two Macs that are connected via FireWire, Thunderbolt 2, USB-C, or Thunderbolt 3. One Mac basically shows up as an external disk on the other Mac, so you can browse and copy files over like you would from a hard drive.
What Are The Manual Mouse Commands On A Mac Laptop
How to start up in target disk mode
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold T on your keyboard.
- Release T after about 20 seconds.
After your Mac starts in target disk mode, you'll see it as a desktop icon on the other Mac. You can treat it just like an external hard drive and drag it to the trash when you want to 'eject' it.
Start up from the macOS startup disk when other disks are available: X
If your Mac would normally start up from a non-macOS startup disk, like a Windows partition, then you can hit X to start from the macOS startup disk. (You can also do this in Startup Manager.)
How to start up from the macOS startup disk when your Mac would otherwise start from a non-macOS startup disk
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold X on your keyboard.
- Release when you see the Apple logo.
Start up in verbose mode: command-V
Verbose mode is another startup mode for advanced users, which allows you to enter UNIX commands in order to try and isolate startup-related issues.
How to start up in verbose mode
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold command-V on your keyboard.
- Release the keys when you see the white text on the screen.
Eject removable media on startup: ⏏, F12, mouse button, or trackpad button
If you don't want an external hard drive to mount on startup or you simply want your CD or flash drive out as quickly as possible when you turn on your Mac, you can eject it right on startup.
How to eject removable media on startup
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold the eject button (⏏), F12, your mouse button, or your trackpad button. Press and hold one of these.
- Release when your removable media is ejected.
Reset the SMC in MacBooks: shift-control-option
![Commands Commands](/uploads/1/2/4/6/124629259/871944860.png)
The SMC (system management controller) is a system that controls the hardware in your MacBook that the main part of your system isn't responsible for. These include things like cooling fan speeds, power, display management, port illumination, and more. There are many things you should try before resetting the SMC, but if you're at the end of your rope, then reset it.
How to reset the SMC in your MacBook
Note: If the battery in your MacBook is removable (older MacBooks), then just take it out, press the power button for 5 seconds, and put the battery back in and turn it on again.
- Start or restart your Mac and immediately press and hold shift-control-option on the left side of your keyboard and then press and hold the power button at the same time. Hold the three keys and the power button for 10 seconds.
- Release all the keys.
- Press the power button to turn your MacBook on.
Questions or tips?
Got any questions or other startup keyboard shortcuts to add? Sound off in the comments below!
Updated December 2017: These are still all the keyboard shortcuts to use when starting up your Mac.
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