UsingMac - Modifier Keys and their Impact on Shortcuts 8/20/08 6:29 AM

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If you want to become a Mac power user, you should first remember some essential keyboard shortcuts.
These most commonly used Mac shortcuts alone can cost you a hell lot of time to remember them.

Luckily, most of the shortcuts are derived by adding modifier key to the initial shortcut. These initial
shortcuts are easy to remember and shorter than their derivation (i.e. addition of Option, Control, Shift,
etc). With only half of your work, you can get your productivity double-up; It sounds like iPhone ads:
Twice as Fast. Half the Price.

I also have included some nifty tricks to give you an idea on how you can intuitively apply this to your
daily needs.
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UsingMac - Modifier Keys and their Impact on Shortcuts 8/20/08 6:29 AM

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Command-Control-PowerKey Force Restart

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14 Command-UpArrow Go to Enclosing Folder

Command-Control-UpArrow Go to Enclosing Folder in New Window

Command-Option-UpArrow Go to Enclosing Folder and Close Current Window

15 Command-A Select All Items

Command-Option-A Deselect All Items

16 Command-N New Application Window

Command-Shift-N Create New Folder

Command-Option-N Create New Smart Folder

17 Command-Spacebar Activate/Deactivate Spotlight

Command-Option-Spacebar Open Spotlight Window

18 Command-Shift-3 Capture Entire Screen

Command-Control-Shift-3 Capture Entire Screen to Clipboard

19 Command-Shift-4 Capture Selected Region

Command-Shift-4 + Spacebar Capture Hovered Items

Command-Shift-4 + Hold Spacebar Move Selected Region

Command-Shift-4 + Hold Option Resize Selected Region

Command-Shift-4 + Hold Shift Resize Selected Region Vertically or Horizontally

Command-Control-Shift-4 Capture Selected Region to Clipboard

20 Some Actions Invoke Animation

Shift-Some Actions Invoke Slow-Motion

21 Command-Option-8 Toggle Zoom Mode

Command-Option-Control-8 Invert Display Color

22 Click Dock Icon Launch Application

Command-Click Open Application's Enclosing Folder

Control-Click Show Item's Contextual Menu

Option-Click Switch Application and Hide Current

Command-Option-Click Switch Application and Hide All Others

23 Command-S Save

Command-Shift-S Save As…

Command-S (Terminal) Export Terminal Output

Command-Shift-S Export Selected Terminal Text

24 Command-T Open New Tab

Command-Shift-T Toggle Hide/Show Tab Bar

Command-T (Finder) Add to Sidebar

Command-Shift-T Add to Favorites

25 Tab Select Next Input Field

Shift-Tab Select Previous Input Field

Command-Tab Switch to Next Running Application

Command-Shift-Tab Switch to Previous Running Application

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26 K Input a character 'K'

Option-Shift-K Draw Apple logo

27 Control-Eject Show Restart, Sleep, Shutdown Dialog Box

Command-Control-Eject Quit All Applications and Restart

Command-Option-Eject Sleep

28 Command-D Duplicate Items

Command-Option-D Show/Hide Dock

Command-Control-D Show Word Definition

Inside the table, there are 80+ keyboard shortcuts, but you only need to remember 20+ of them and
apply some modifier keys for various situations. It's less painful than having to memorize all of them.

Additional Information
Of course, that table alone won't be quite informative for you. Here are several important information
regarding to some keyboard shortcuts.

Info Pane
By using the same basic keyboard shortcuts Command-I, you can make a variation on what kinds of
information you want your Mac to display.

Get Info
Using Get Info, you're asking your Mac to display you the information of a single file. Even though
you select many files, your Mac will assume that you want to display information of every single
files. Let's say you've selected hundreds of files, you will get the same amount of info panes
(hundreds of them) displayed by your Mac.
Get Summary Info
With this keyboard shortcut, your Mac will know that now you want to have the Summary Info of
your multiple files, i.e. if you've selected hundreds of files, you will only see one info pane which is
the total of everything from those files. It's always useful to know that by selecting only one file,
you won't be able to call up this kind of info pane.
Show Inspector
This is slightly different than Get Summary Info. When you're activating this info pane, you can
move your focus wherever you want, either to single file or to multiple files, and the info of the
files you selected will be displayed. So you can go around and quickly see the information of your
files. But there is a little bit of troublesome thing here, you need to use the same keystrokes as
when you called it to close the inspector pane.

With a simple change of your Mac modifier keys, you will notice that there exist a slight different in
getting the information of your files but obviously it adds a huge difference to your productivity.

Force Quit
Force Quit is the Mac term for Windows CTRL-ALT-DEL in a slightly more stylish manner.

Force Quit…
When the keyboard shortcut Option-Command-Esc is triggered, a pane displaying your running
applications will pop up. You can kill selected application by force quitting it. Note that you can't
force quit Finder, you can only Relaunch it instead.
Force Quit Application
Keyboard shortcut for this Shift-Option-Command-Escape has the same function as usual force
quit but with different purpose, i.e. this operation will instantly kill your current active application.

Find
This will be the most essential operation. Do you know that there are two kinds of searching purposes
ever exist on your Mac?

Find…
The purpose of using this is to search for keywords. This searching covers not only filenames but
also contents of the file. This is so powerful that it will be like killing an ant with a nuclear bomb
(and will kill yourself) if you use this just to find certain filename.
Find by Name…
As the name suggests, this function is very recommended to be used to search for a filename from
your hundreds of files.

Quick Look
Everyone should already know Quick Look, how cool it is and with Spacebar or keystrokes Command-Y
it can be invoked. But maybe you don't know this, by adding a modifier key Option in front, you can
change the behavior into displaying Slideshow view, which is the full screen mode of Quick Look.

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UsingMac - Modifier Keys and their Impact on Shortcuts 8/20/08 6:29 AM

Delete File
This is an interesting shortcut. With Command-Delete, you can delete selected files, after that what you
would actually do? Empty the trash is the answer; Apple's programmers figure it out beforehand and
assign keyboard shortcut Command-Shift-Delete to empty trash, for the continuation of deleting files.

Copy and Paste

There is one important thing that you need to know here: they're two different places to store copied
text and copied font style.

Go to Enclosing Folder
Maybe, you're a bit curious why they should design in such a way that there are three behaviors of
going to enclosing folder. Here I will share you what I usually do with these different techniques.

Go to Enclosing Folder
I will use this shortcut if from the first I only intend to dig down to the depth of the folder. I am
not going to do any kinds of file transferring or file moving. And I am not going to resize the
Finder window. In short, I just simply want to expand the folder quickly and get what I want from
inside.
Go to Enclosing Folder in New Window
If I think that I will still need current Finder window either to move files or to open other files, I
will use this keyboard shortcut Command-Control-UpArrow. In this way, I don't need to open a
new window and redo my Finder path.
Go to Enclosing Folder and Close Current Window
The purpose of this action is to expand the folder and get the convenient view of what's inside the
folder. When you expand to new window, the new Finder window will be resized in such a way
that you will feel more comfortable with it than with the old one.

Some Actions for Slow-Motion Mode

Some actions are including:

Expose and Spaces Actions

Window Minimization/Maximization
Dashboard Activation
Stack and Grid View Expansion
New Finder Window Creation
Widget Deletion

All of the actions mentioned above can be animated in slow-motion mode.

Duplicate Items, Show/Hide Dock and Show Word Definition

This is the example of the phenomenon that Apple has run out of available keyboard shortcut to be
used. We can't draw any connections between these three actions.

My Last Word
It's not just the operating system you use. It's how you use it.
It's not just how you use it. It's how you master it.

Productivity
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1 COMMENTS (RSS)

You can also slow-mo the little dashboard menu on the bottom
Enox
August 20th,
2008 Time:
09:12 PM

1
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