Filed under: Productivity, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Hit esc for some word suggestions
It
appears that while typing a word in many OS X apps, such as iChat and Yojimbo, hitting the Esc key will present a
drop-down list of word completion options. I *think* this might be a Cocoa-related service of Mac OS X (sorry, Firefox
users), but I'm always hesitant to toss out a guess like that because I am constantly surprised as to which apps are
actually Cocoa (Finder, for example, is still Carbon, even in Tiger). I get this popup in Ecto, Stickies and Mail as
well, but not in any input areas on websites in Safari, so feel free to experiment with this handy but (as far as I
know) undocumented feature.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Stephen said 10:19AM on 3-25-2006
Wow. I you guys.
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bloodthirstyrobot said 10:25AM on 3-25-2006
That is so...cool! What a gem of a find.
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macsterdam said 10:58AM on 3-25-2006
Great tip - thanks very much!
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derek said 11:07AM on 3-25-2006
It is OPT+ESC, not just ESC, by the way...
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David Chartier said 11:14AM on 3-25-2006
#3: Using just the Esc key seems to be working just fine in all the apps I tested Derek. I'm on the latest version of Tiger, and the only keyboard/typing haxie/addon I'm using is TextPander, but I know that's not what enables this feature. While Opt-Esc seems to also work for me, Esc works just fine all by itself.
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Tomm said 11:21AM on 3-25-2006
Interestingly, opt-esc works for me, while esc alone does not. But it works in Safari for me. It's kinda nice, but I'm not sure really when I would ever use it.
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Alex said 11:23AM on 3-25-2006
It works in this input-area as I comment right now...
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Ccooper said 11:59AM on 3-25-2006
See:
http://saladwithsteve.com/osx/2004/11/word-completion-in-cocoa-apps.html
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Adam said 12:57PM on 3-25-2006
While esc works sometimes, opt-esc will work in places where esc will not...
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dkmarsh said 12:59PM on 3-25-2006
F5 does the same thing for me.
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J. Simon van der Walt said 1:05PM on 3-25-2006
Funny, I just noticed that by accident today, in the Systrans Translation widget of all places.
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David H said 1:06PM on 3-25-2006
opt-esc works for me in Safari (in the built-in Google search box) while esc erases the word I type. Same thing in the Mail search box. Cool tip though! I never knew. Keep up the good work!
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Pick said 1:53PM on 3-25-2006
I just right-click on the word I misspelled, it comes up with the same thing.
Also right-click and go down to "Spelling", you will see more options for configuration.
And it IS documented, look at the help for finder and search for "spell".
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David Chartier said 2:30PM on 3-25-2006
#13: This isn't the built in spelling engine, it's a different word suggestion engine. Try using the keyboard shortcut and you'll understand; it isn't suggesting proper spellings for words you've already completed, it suggests words you're trying to complete. Not much unlike T9 text input on mobile phones.
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Pick said 4:24PM on 8-07-2007
#14: Yeah, I noticed that like 3 minutes after I posted.
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yoharryo said 3:40PM on 3-25-2006
dont wanna be accused of critiquing you guys, as people always the full wrath of TUAW readers when that happens..but come on.. Scott McNulty posted this almost a year ago!!! http://www.tuaw.com/2005/05/26/autocomplete-in-cocoa-applications/
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David Chartier said 5:58PM on 3-25-2006
#16: Right yoharryo, but it's nice to have a reminder from time to time.
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totoro said 7:17PM on 3-25-2006
Hmmmm...isn't Camino a cocoa app? I can get it to work in Safari, but not in Camino..
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David Chartier said 7:55PM on 3-25-2006
Yea but afaik, Camino is a bit of a Cocoa quirk, because it doesn't seem to play with some of OS X's text engines. For example, take a look for the Edit > Spelling menu... it isn't there.
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oyam said 11:58PM on 3-25-2006
This is a standard part of cocoa. All esc, opt-esc, F5 do the same kind of word completion and works in all text fields/areas as long as the apps are using native widgets (or extend native widgets)
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