Filed under: Tips and tricks, TUAW Tips, Leopard
TUAW Tip: Use Help to select menu items in Leopard
Over at Mac OS X Hints I recently ran into this doozy of a hint that I somehow missed on its first go around. Basically the idea is to capitalize on a great new feature in Leopard's help. You can get to any menu item without your mouse by activating the help menu with the keyboard shortcut ? + ? (i.e. ? + shift + /). Then type the name of the menu command you want and scroll down to it with the arrow keys. That command's menu will automatically drop down with the item highlighted, hit enter and you're done! If you're a keyboard maven this is a really easy way to get to your menu items (though you can also activate the menubar from the keyboard with ?F2).
Thanks Brandon!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Think Adrian said 10:17AM on 2-08-2008
In Safari, you can also use this to find bookmarks. A GREAT feature.
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Dane said 10:33AM on 2-08-2008
Remember (if you have one of those new fangled aluminum keyboards) and you have the multimedia/dashboard functions mapped to the icons on the keys to press the Function key (Fn) to activate the ^F2 trick.
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niclet said 10:34AM on 2-08-2008
I prefer shortcuts.
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quandmeme said 11:49AM on 2-08-2008
I do this kind of thing too. When I think about it I think its funny that we have these slick interfaces that we use like a commandline!
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ak said 11:55AM on 2-08-2008
This doesn't work when using a dvorak keyboard mapping. It brings up the Help window instead. Anyone know how to fix it?
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craig said 12:07PM on 2-08-2008
This is a classic example of a function that could not possibly be quicker on the keyboard than with the mouse. Using shortcut keys directly to menu items, maybe, but as Tog has pointed out, research shows even those are frequently slower than mousing. This tip, (using a keyboard shortcut, then waiting for the help menu to do it's search thing, then using the arrow key to go down, then hitting enter) has to take the cake, though. Unless you physically can't use the pointing device, or literally have no idea which menu to go to, there's no way this makes sense.
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Alex said 12:37PM on 2-08-2008
You stole the words right out of my...fingers. How can this possibly save anyone time?
yakov chodosh said 12:35PM on 2-08-2008
I would say that last case is pretty common -- not knowing which menu to go to. It annoys the crap out of me that when I want to insert a special character in Pages, I have to go to the EDIT not the Insert menu -- even though I'm not editing anything.
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Craig said 12:42PM on 2-08-2008
Don't get me wrong; I think this is a brilliant addition to the Help menu system, for user's looking for, you know, help. It just doesn't make any sense as some sort of power user tip or as part of a routine workflow.
Darren Kwong said 2:41PM on 2-08-2008
I have to say that I've certainly used Help to find items when I don't know which menu to go to. I think the most useful thing from this post is learning the ⌘ + ? shortcut. For commonly used menu items, however, I usually use the shortcut keys or assign shortcut keys from the Keyboard System preferences
phoward8020 said 9:26PM on 2-08-2008
This is an awesome tip. I'm totally a keep-your-hands-on-the-keyboard guy, but I can never remember the ^-F2 shortcut when I want to access menu items that don't have a shortcut assigned to them.
Also, since I'm on a MBP, ^-F2 is actually "function-control-F2", and all the keys are on the left side of the keyboard. Bleah! Typing ⌘-? feels MUCH more comfortable!
The one thing that I'd add is that it's completely unnecessary to type the name of the command. After hitting ⌘-?, you can simply use the arrow keys to move to the menu item you want. Handy if you don't remember its exact name.
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Brandon said 2:51AM on 2-09-2008
Yea, I submitted this to tuaw a while back, never got any coverage. Even on the internet I get no respect.
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ncc1701d said 4:54AM on 2-09-2008
just because it bugs me: i think "i.e." means "for example." perhaps "that is" or just removing the "i.e." altogether would be better. i really don't mean to be a d!ck about this. sorry.
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Mat Lu said 5:26AM on 2-09-2008
Indeed; 'i.e.' is the abbreviation for the Latin "id est" which means in English: "that is." You're thinking of e.g., short for "exempli gratia" or "for example."
If you're going to be a pedant, it's important to get it right.
Rex said 5:55AM on 2-11-2008
I wish this would let you Create a Keyboard Shortcut for the selected Menu item... =/
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