Whatever operating system or program you are using, knowing and knowing how to use key combinations makes everything easier and every job faster . The fact of not having to take your hands off the keyboard while writing something or being able to surf the internet by opening multiple sites together and moving from one to another without using the mouse, saves a lot of time.
We talked about keyboard shortcuts on Windows PCs and now we see a guide to the MAC keyboard, which is very similar, although there are some keys with different names.
The main one is the CMD or Command key, which is the key to use many key combinations and which can be thought of as the CTRL key of a Windows PC.
READ ALSO: Keyboard shortcuts on Mac to know
In addition to CMD, the other important keys on a Mac whose purpose and use must be known:
- OPT or Option key which is the equivalent of the Windows Alt key, indicated with a symbol of an oblique bar from left to right.
- Control, which is also indicated by the symbol of a circumflex accent ^ or CTRL, is mainly used together with a mouse click to open the contextual menu.
- Fn (Function), to use the function keys F1, F2 etc. in laptops.
- Shift or Shift, also indicated with an arrow upwards.
- Caps Lock, the capital lock, to write uppercase when on, also indicated with an arrow upwards and a line below.
- Delete, indicated with an arrow to the left which is like the PC's DEL key.
- Esc, to exit the programs.
- Eject, the top right button with an up arrow.
Speaking of key combinations, on Mac, there are so many that it is also difficult to remember them all.
The most important ones, however, can be summarized as follows:
Key combinations that can be used in the start / stop phase
Press the C key while powering on to start the Mac from a bootable disk.
- CMD-S, Start in single user mode.
- SHIFT, Boot in safe mode.
- OPT-CMD-ESPELLI, to put computers in sleep mode.
- CTRL-Eject, to open the Restart, Sleep, shutdown options window.
Key combinations on the Finder and app icons
- CMD-A - Select all.
- CMD-C - Copy.
- CMD-X - Size.
- CMD-Z - Undo / Redo.
- CMD-V - Paste.
- CMD-S - Save.
- CMD-O - Opens the selected file (as happens in Windows by pressing the Enter key which instead on Mac opens the rename file).
- CMD-F - Open the Finder.
- CMD-N - New Finder window.
- CMD-Shift-N - Create new folder.
- CMD-R - View original of an alias.
- CMD-W - Close window (like Alt-F4 on Windows)
- CMD-M - Minimize window.
- CMD-Q - Exit an application.
- CMD-OPT-ESC - Options for forced exit (basically like the Windows task manager that opens with CTRL-Alt-Del on Windows)
- CMD-arrow keys to go to the beginning or end in a row, as do the Home and End keys in Windows.
Keyboard combinations for screenshots
- CMD-SHIFT-3 - Capture Full Screen screenshot.
- CMD-SHIFT-4 - Capture only selected area.
Combinations for Spotlight and Applications
- CMD-Space - Open Spotlight.
- CMD-Tab - Switch to another application used.
Keyboard combinations within programs
In every Mac OS X program you can find useful keyboard shortcuts simply by looking at the items on its menu.
Next to each menu item, usually, there is the combination to use to do that operation.
Custom key combinations can also be created in the System Preferences under the Keyboards section.
From here, you can add key shortcuts to control any type of action on the Mac.
For example, those who come from a Windows PC can exchange the CMD key with CTRL here.
To know how to write special characters, symbols and emojis on Mac you can read this guide from the Apple website.
Also on the Apple website you can get an overview of all possible keyboard abbreviations on Mac.
