Humanity should be grateful for the invention of Mac hotkeys. They probably saved us thousand years of time if put together. There is something addictive in using shortcuts - the quickness, the feeling of a keyboard, the geeky confidence in your fingers when you realize “hurray it works!” Once you get hooked on shortcuts, you’ll never go back to clicking again.
Basic Mac hotkeys combinations
Many Mac owners swear that keyboard shortcuts help simplify their lives. If you’re new to a Mac, learning all the available keyboard shortcuts can be a real challenge. Below, we've rounded up text formatting shortcuts for Windows and Mac. You can use these commands on text in any program, such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, email, etc. Windows keyboard.
Certain keyboard shortcuts are universal across programs (and often platforms), and many of these have become second nature, just tripping off our fingers without a thought: Command/Ctrl-s to save, Command/Ctrl-c to copy, or Shift-Command-b (Mac) or Ctrl-b (Windows) to shift between bold and regular-weight faces. But while that automatic finger twitch produces predictable results for. The best keyboard shortcuts for text formatting on your Mac or PC insider@insider.com (Abigail Abesamis Demarest) 1/22/2021 The Great Depression led to many of the hobbies we enjoy now.
1. Quit all apps
Sometimes an app that you thought you quit is still secretly running in the background. When your Mac lags and you need some fresh memory, you may choose to quit all apps. You probably heard of Force Quit (Cmd + Option + Esc), but it’s a too long way to do it.
Quit many apps in a row: Cmd + Tab
Then, holding down Cmd press Q to cycle between apps you need to close.
2. Delete a file completely
Dragging files to the Trash? Wait, this is not the only option. Here’s a shortcut to quickly delete unwanted files on a Mac, bypassing the Trash. Caution: there’s no way back.
To completely delete a file: Option + Cmd + Delete
Did you know, the Command key ? symbol was borrowed from a road sign that is used across Scandinavia? Its original use is to denote tourist attractions. Early Mac models had Apple key instead of Command, but it later was changed as Steve Jobs feared that there would be too many “apples” in the OS interface.
3. Copy and paste a screenshot directly
Cmd + Shift + 4 is an old classic way to make a screenshot on a Mac. But here comes the combination to take your screenshotting skills to the new level. Normally you would make a screenshot, pick it from your desktop, and only then paste it to the new location. It appears, all this time you could do it easier.
To copy-paste a screenshot: Shift + Control + Cmd + 4
4. Quickly switch to the desktop
Sometimes your screen is so obscured by windows it would take years to click through to the desktop. Thank goodness, there is a Mac keystroke combination designed for people like us: the folks who are drowning in an ocean of windows.
To remove window overload: Cmd + F3
5. Open Spotlight
Spotlight, your Mac’s internal search engine, can make your life 1000% easier. It finds files faster than Finder and intuitively predicts what are you after. To open Spotlight right on the spot (sorry for the pun), use this magic combo.
To launch Spotlight search: Cmd + Space bar
Cool shortcut keys for Mac
1. Invert display colors
A truly psychedelic key combination. This shortcut inverts all the colors on your Mac's screen to their opposites. Try it, and your world will never be the same. On the flip side, you can find a few practical applications for this command, for example, to adjust your screen to different lighting.
To invert colors on screen: ?md + Option + F5
2. Restore a recently closed tab
This one can be a real savior if you accidentally closed an important tab in a browser, like that pancake recipe or payment confirmation. There’s an easy Mac keyboard shortcut to restore it.
To restore a closed tab: Cmd + Shift + T
3. To shut down your Mac instantly
No, the following Mac shortcut is not about the force shutdown. It’s used when you need to quickly close all dialog windows and shut down your Mac in a legit way. Learn this one, quickly finish your work and finally go outside.
To quickly shut down a Mac: Control + Option + Command + Eject
4. Mac hot keys to invoke Siri
Among all Mac keyboard commands, this is the easiest. Since Siri’s arrival to macOS we got used to talk to Siri about weather and even ask her to play our favorite tracks on Mac. If you are using macOS Sierra or higher, you’ll enjoy the ability to summon Siri using just one hand.
To launch Siri: Cmd + Space bar
A shortcut to free up space on your Mac
Well, not exactly a shortcut, but indeed the quickest way to get more storage on your Mac.
Download CleanMyMac + Install + Click Smart Scan
This combination of actions will free up dozens of gigabytes of space taken by garbage: unwanted files, system junk, app leftovers, etc. CleanMyMac removes about 54 GB of junk on an average Mac. Try and see how it cleans your Mac.
CleanMyMac is available for a free download here.
Finder shortcuts
Finder is quite a resource-demanding tool. When you open a new Finder window it usually takes some time. For quicker access to your main destinations like Applications or Desktop, you can use the following shortcut combinations.
To quickly access Finder folders:
Cmd + Shift + A (for Applications)
Cmd + Shift + U (for Utilities)
Cmd + Shift + D (for Desktop)
Chrome shortcuts
Having hundreds of opened tabs in a browser has become a widespread syndrome nowadays. Closing tabs with a mouse is not only frustrating but also may freeze up your browser. Using a direct shortcut makes this job easy as a morning walk.
To close a current tab in Chrome: Cmd + W
To close a Chrome window: Cmd + Shift + W
To open a new Chrome tab: Cmd + T
Psychologists say you have to do something at least 3 times to put it in your long-term memory. Attach small sticky notes to the outlines of your Mac’s screen with 3 or 4 shortcuts you really want to master. Then, leave it all to your fingers.
Mac shortcuts for documents
1. Copy text without formatting
You want to copy a piece of the text, but the old formatting drags along with it. Now you spend more time formatting rather than actually creating a text. To strip the text from old styling, use the following Mac hotkeys combination. A very good one to stretch your fingers.
To paste text without formatting:
Hold down Shift + Option + Command and hit V
2. Paste special symbols and emojis
Probably this is the easiest documented shortcut key for a Mac. To enter special symbols, like those lamdas, tildas, and alfas, you need to press just one key. For instance, if you need to type a modified E, hold down the E key for one second and then choose among available variations that appear.
To enter an alternate character: Hold down the character key
To paste emojis in the text: Press Control + Command + Space
3. Enter a strikethrough text on a Mac
You won’t believe, but 8000 people are googling how to do a strikethrough text on a Mac everyday. Although some applications don’t support it, this combination well works in TextEdit and Word. Now you can use it in every second line to add some roughness to your writing.
To apply strikethrough formatting: Cmd + Shift + X
4. Quickly print documents
The next combination works for most apps that allow printing. You don’t need to figure out where the print dialogue is located in every case. Just memorize this quick combination and send your files to print from anywhere.
To invoke a print dialogue: Cmd + P
Mac shortcuts to delete many files at once
There comes a time when you need to do a spring cleaning on your Mac: sort out old garbage, move photos to an external drive, or clean up your old downloads. It is time-consuming and takes an immense willpower simply to start. But lucky you are: there are a few shortcuts to remove large heaps of files as quickly as if you had a machete.
To select folder contents: Cmd + A
To delete a group of files after selection: Cmd + Delete
To empty the Trash: Cmd + Shift + Delete
If you’ve got many files left after backing up, this will save you a good deal of time moving them to the Trash bin.
To save you from a headache, there are apps that will do the mundane deletion job in an instant. CleanMyMac is perhaps the most reliable one. It has a tool that specifically searches for Large & Old files on your drive for a quick cleanup. CleanMyMac is available for a free download. So, check it out.
This was our take on most useful keyboard shortcuts for Mac. Thanks for reading. Below you'll find a few more links about Mac and productivity.
Best text expansion app for Mac
Whether you’re new to Mac or have been using it for years, highly specialized things like shortcuts, special Mac symbols, and accented characters might result in a web investigation spiralling out of control.
If you’ve just recently switched from Windows, you should know that Macs don’t really use alt codes to type special symbols. Instead, all of the most popular Unicode characters can be typed in right from the keyboard. Unfortunately, Apple could do a much better job of shining light at this functionality.
For example, if you want to get a copyright symbol on Windows (©), you need to type in Alt 0169 — whereas, a copyright symbol on Mac is just Option + G. Similarly, a degree symbol on Mac (º) is Option + Zero and a registered trademark symbol on Mac (™) is Option + 2.
Truth is there are many more like this and below we’ll explore different ways of how to type copyright symbol on Mac or any special characters Macs allow, where to find Apple keyboard symbols, and whether there’s an emoji keyboard on Mac.
What Are All The Mac Keyboard Symbols?
While a standard computer keyboard contains around 80 keys, you’re able — in one way or another — use it to input all of the Unicode characters, of which there are about 130,000.
To start, simply explore how all the face-value characters change when you combine them with modifier keys — Control, Option, and Command. You can even combine multiple modifiers together as well. To see all Mac keyboard shortcuts symbols clearly, however, you need to turn on the full keyboard layout.
Cleverly type with Setapp
Download Setapp to accelerate typing special keyboard symbols on Mac – bypass any limitations right now.
Display all Mac keyboard symbols
Even if you’ve been using your Mac for a while, it’s useful to look at all the possible keyboard combinations from time to time to refresh your memory and discover new ways of quickly inputting information.
Luckily, it’s easy to show all Mac key symbols at once:
- Go to System Preferences ➙ Keyboard
- Check the box next to “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar”
Now you can click on the language flag in your menu bar and choose Show Keyboard Viewer. The interactive display will appear, showing all the keyboard symbols and altering the view in real time when you use modifier keys.
Of course, even using all the modifier keys and combinations available, it’s impossible to fit all the characters in such constrained amount of space. To see all Mac key symbols, you need to select Show Emoji & Symbols option from the same language flag menu, or use a shortcut Control + Cmd + Space.
Here, you’ll see all kinds of categories on the left: Emoji, Arrows, Currency Symbols, etc. In the center are all the characters within a given category. And on the right you can pick a font variation of the same symbol.
To type in a TM symbol Macs use, for example:
- Open your word processor of choice
- Call the Mac symbols menu
- Navigate to Letterlike Symbols on the sidebar
- Double-click on ™ to paste it into your editor
How to create custom Mac keyboard shortcuts symbols
With the Show Emoji & Symbols window, you have access to nearly all Unicode characters you’ll ever need. However, if you need to use some special characters — such as a copyright symbol on Mac — rather frequently, it would be quite inconvenient to call up a menu and search for what you need every time. Of course, you can add the copyright symbol to your favorite characters, which will save you some time, but there’s a much better way.
Macs allow you to create shortcuts for all keyboard symbols to be able to easily type them in whenever you need. For example, to create a shortcut for the copyright symbol on Mac:
- Type in the © character into your editor as described above and copy it with Command + C
- Open System Preferences ➙ Keyboard
- Navigate to the Text tab
- Click the plus sign
- Paste your © symbol in the With column on the right
- Type in a desired key combination to trigger the copyright symbol on Mac in the Replace column on the left
Although this default shortcuts method works well for characters or emoji, it doesn’t effectively translate into longer strings of text or paragraphs. If you want to, for instance, create a shortcut that outputs a sales email template, you’d need to use a little nifty tool called Rocket Typist.
Rocket Typist is a full-featured text expansion app created to minimize repetition in composing any form of text-based communication. It’s essentially a small database of text snippets you’ll use over and over again.
Starting with Rocket Typist is easy: use File ➙ New to create a new snippet, specify the abbreviation, fill out as much text (sentences or even paragraphs) as you need, and then use the abbreviation to expand text in any application.
How to switch between keyboard languages quickly
Sometimes, the Mac keyboard symbols you need are only available in another language — say, they could be Cyrillic-based. To access them, you’d need to enable another keyboard layout on your Mac.
Luckily, it’s easy to do:
- Go to System Preferences ➙ Keyboard
- Navigate to Input Sources
- Click the plus sign
- Choose the language you need and press Add
Now, the second keyboard layout will be activated. Don’t forget to check the box next to “Show Input menu in menu bar” to see which layout is currently active. The standard shortcut to switch between layouts is Cmd + Space, but you can also change it to Caps Lock key in the Input Sources options.
Keyboard Shortcut For Bold On Mac Laptop
Extra tip: typing emoji on iPhone is much easier if you add an emoji keyboard layout to your languages.
Special Characters: Type in various symbol variations
In some cases, you might just want to access a variation of the symbol that’s already on your keyboard, such as an accented letter.
One way to do this is to find the character of your choice in the Keyboard Viewer, as described above. Another way is to use a keyboard shortcut. You can get an acute accent by typing Option + E and then the letter. Similarly, circumflex is Option + I, grave accent is Option + backquote, tilde is Option + N, and umlaut is Option + U.
A quicker option though is to simply press the key of the letter you want to modify and hold it for a second until a small menu appears. Then just choose a number that corresponds to the modification you seek.
Digitize complex math expressions
If your studies or line of work require the use of complex math, you might be spending too much time crafting LaTeX and MathML expressions by hand. But as with nearly everything else nowadays, there’s an easier way.
MathKey is a Mac app specifically developed to write complex equations in academic papers and math documents. Instead of composing dozens of obscure symbols together, the app allows you to hand-write the equation using your trackpad (or mouse) and output perfect LaTeX or MathML, ready for publication.
Search for anything instantly
It’s likely that you won’t retain all the information provided here. But don’t worry, the only thing you need to keep is a supercharged search that can take you right back to the answer you’re looking for.
Lacona is an intelligent search for your Mac that contextually analyzes the query and outputs a range of possible solutions, whether it’s launching a certain app, looking it up online, or performing a pre-defined action.
Any question about Mac keyboard shortcuts symbols — such as “how to type copyright symbol on Mac?” — would be met with a guiding response. And all you have to do to start Lacona is press Option + Space.
What Is The Shortcut For Bold On A Mac
So there are a lot of things your Mac is capable of that you might have not even considered before. With regards to symbols and characters, what you see on the keyboard is just a tiny slice compared to the total amount available. Using Mac symbols properly will enrich your communication, making it clear and efficient, especially if you get used to creating snippets with Rocket Typist, transferring math equations with MathKey, and keeping everything at the tips of your fingers with Lacona.
Best of all, the apps mentioned above are available to you on a free trial through Setapp, a platform of more than 150 specific Mac apps that are designed to make your days more productive and fun. Now you’re ready to solve some equations!
