macOS Shortcuts - Just 'cause

My favorite, most used/useful macOS keyboard shortcuts. 🤓

Written by Eva Dee on (about a 4 minute read).

🤔 Note: This list does not include the already well-known shortcuts such as cmd + c for copy or cmd + f for find.

Another note: As the title implies, these shortcuts are for macOS. If you want to use them on a Windows machine, you might just get away with changing cmd to ctrl to get it working. Obviously, this won't be true for the Custom shortcuts (featured right at the end of this post). These will work only for me. Because I'm special (and mostly, because I set it up like so.)

Table of contents

Why didn't anyone tell me sooner?

  • Saving screenshots to the clipboard instead of a file 🤯

You modify the shortcut inside the Keyboard/shortcuts/Screenshots. Shoutout to Stefan for telling me this.

  • cmd + ~

Toggle between different windows of the same app.

  • ctrl + down arrow

View All Windows Of The Current App

  • Double-click text to select a word.

Triple-click text to select the whole paragraph. (Wat. How did I now know that? 😳)

Text clippings

Did you know that if you drag-n-drop a chunk of text onto your desktop this will create a .textclipping file which you can then again drag and drop into other apps? Madness, absolute and utter madness!

Excellent for copying frequently-used text (spells, incarnations, that sort of thing).

Finder

  • cmd + 1

To open Icons view

  • cmd + 2

To open List view

  • cmd + 3

To open Columns view

  • cmd + shift + .

Show hidden files (dotfiles) inside any finder window or file open dialog.

Swoosh

  • cmd + shift + h

Home directory.

  • cmd + shift + a

Applications directory.

  • cmd + shift + d

Desktop directory.

  • cmd + shift + g

Go to a directory (with autocomplete)

General usefulness

  • cmd + w

Closes the active window you are currently in. Use Option-Command-W to close all currently active app windows.

  • cmd + m

Mimimize. Aka hide in dock.

  • cmd + option

Hold these two then click on the app icon (in the dock) to get to all the open windows for a specific app. The rest of the apps get hidden.

  • cmd + shift + /

Focuses current application help search field - useful for finding hidden settings (inside text editors etc).

  • cmd + click (on a link)

To open it in your default browser.

  • cmd + ,

For preferences.

  • cmd + .

Often times works as "cancel".

  • ctrl + click

For bringing up context menus.

  • enter + shift

Add a new line (instead of sending) - most used in Messages and Slack.

  • cmd + 0

To return to the default (100%) zoom (most used in browsers).

  • cmd + e

Select a word, then use it as a search query.

  • cmd + g

Navigate through each instance of the item you want to find. This is waaaaay better than using that tiny dropdown arrow for going to the next search.

Dexter like shortcuts

(from the TV series Dexter, doggy dude, very quick with hiding his apps/windows/tabs every time someone unexpectedly barged into his office. )

  • cmd + ctrl + q

Lock your machine, a must when working in a non-home environment (or working on secretive birthday plans).

  • cmd + h

To hide an app (it's still opened), but unlike minimize, you don't have it seen opened in the dock (to the right of that vertical bar).

Custom shortcuts

  • Turn notifications on/off (especially useful when you are sharing your screen 😅)

I have that wired to:

  • caps lock + m

  • Forward delete:

  • caps lock + backspace