The function keys are your friends

I just love learning new keyboard shortcuts. Anything that keeps my hands on the keys and off of the mouse makes me happy. I thought I had a good repertoire of shortcuts memorized, but every now and then I come across a few that are new to me. Such was the case when I stumbled across these gems at Appleology:

F2 plus Control = Navigate the menu bar, starting from the left hand side.
F3 plus Control = Navigate the dock, using the left and right arrow keys to move between icons and the up and down arrow keys to view the navigate thought the contextual menu.
F4 plus Control = cycle through all of the open windows.
F8 plus Control = navigate through the right side of the menu bar. Note that this only works with some menu bar icons. In fact, I was only able to select the Remote Desktop icon this way

Pretty nice. If you knew this already consider it a refresher, if not I hope you find these shortcuts useful.

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Source: http://appleology.com/?p=189

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How-tos Tips and tricks

I just love learning new keyboard shortcuts. Anything that keeps my hands on the keys and off of the mouse makes me happy. I thought I had...

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patRice

Yeah, shortcuts are cool.

However, I am a huge fan of Quicksilver and would prefer using it over the Function key shortcuts. (Have you tried Quicksilver yet?)

To Control plus F4 I would definitely rather recommend Peter Maurer's WITCH Preference Pane - it is fantastic! :-)

January 24 2006 at 12:26 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

patRice

January 24 2006 at 12:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Anasco

Thanks for the refresher. I have edited these (via the Keyboard and Mouse pref pane) a bit for use on my Powerboo, for example Ctrl D toggles focus on my Dock, and Crtl M for the Apple System Menu. I remember using these under 10.2, and really missed them with later upgrades. Thanks for the refresher, great tip.

January 24 2006 at 12:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Doug Adams

Now, is there a tonic that will help you commit to memory all the keyboard shortcuts you like to use?

January 23 2006 at 5:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kreg Schlosser

You can turn off needing to use the Fn key to use the Functions keys in the system preferences>keyboard & mouse>keyboard> Check the box next to "Use F keys to Control Software Functions"
I don't know why this is not the default choice on ALL mac laptop. It allows you to use dashboard and expose with out the Fn Key (and make the hardware functions like screen brightness volume and eject use Fn instead... like every other notebook ever made!)
Sorry for the little rant

January 23 2006 at 4:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

andy

cool.

But isn't control+F4 kind of made useless now with F9?

January 23 2006 at 3:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Reid Ellis

It's too bad you cannot bind things to so as to avoid needing to also hold down to get function keys. :-/

January 23 2006 at 2:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Thomas

Nice tips. I also use Butler to program F1 - F7 to actually do something like open iCal or a website. Now all my F keys have a purpose!

January 23 2006 at 2:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brian Webster

Note that you can customize all these shortcuts in the Keyboard/Mouse pane in System Preferences. I found the control-function key combos a bit of a stretch, so I changed them to somewhat easier to reach keys.

January 23 2006 at 12:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

blalor

^-F4 is my favorite; it even cycles through Konfabulator (*sigh* "Yahoo! Widget Engine") windows!

January 23 2006 at 11:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply