Filed under: How-tos, Tips and tricks
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
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David C. said 11:09AM on 1-23-2006
Thanks for passing these on. It's always nice to learn new shortcuts. I don't know if this only applies to the 12" PowerBook, but in order to get these shortcuts to work I must press fn + ctrl + (whatever F key)
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iFelix said 11:12AM on 1-23-2006
Thanks, I didn't know most of these.
Coming from WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS I have always liked keyboard shortcuts.
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Nick said 11:16AM on 1-23-2006
Contrl + F8 works for everything here (except gmail notifier). David C the Function key thing will apply to all the laptops, it's to allow for the screen brightness and volume. If you plug an external keyboard in you do not need the fn key.
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Eddie R said 11:27AM on 1-23-2006
CTRL + F1 seems to toggle these shortcuts on/off on my PowerBook G4.
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Chris said 11:35AM on 1-23-2006
That's cool and all but that key-configuration is murderous. Regarding the ctrl-F8 it cycles through all of the Apple menu items. Applescript, International, Display, Clock, Sync.
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blalor said 11:37AM on 1-23-2006
^-F4 is my favorite; it even cycles through Konfabulator (*sigh* "Yahoo! Widget Engine") windows!
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Brian Webster said 12:06PM on 1-23-2006
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.
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Thomas said 2:37PM on 1-23-2006
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!
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Reid Ellis said 2:41PM on 1-23-2006
It's too bad you cannot bind things to so as to avoid needing to also hold down to get function keys. :-/
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andy said 3:36PM on 1-23-2006
cool.
But isn't control+F4 kind of made useless now with F9?
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Kreg Schlosser said 4:05PM on 1-23-2006
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
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Doug Adams said 5:35PM on 1-23-2006
Now, is there a tonic that will help you commit to memory all the keyboard shortcuts you like to use?
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David Anasco said 12:27AM on 1-24-2006
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.
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patrice said 12:08PM on 1-24-2006
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! :-)
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patrice said 12:26PM on 1-24-2006
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! :-)
Reply