I've been using a bunch of these for years and even have a few mapped out to macro keys on my Elgato Stream Deck + and my Planck keyboard which have both become indespensible tools inconjuntion with these shortcuts. Hoepfully a few of these can help boost your productivity and enjoyment of the macOS ecosystem.
Stating off with the tried and true, one of the first and go-tos... the trusty copy and paste. You should all get this one in your toolbelt.
Things start to get magical with multiple Apple devices. With Univesal Clipboard enabled, copy and paste between your Mac and iPhone with ease.
Often times when you copy paste between applications, it will carry with it the formatting from where you're copying from, such as bullets, bold, italics, colors, etc... To get around that, add shift to the paste command with SHIFT + CMD + V and your text will be pasted with much of that style removed to match the styling of your pasted location. This is great for grabbing text from a web page and pasting it into a word processor such as Microsoft Word and Apple Pages.
I will often use this in conjuction with cut, copy, and paste to select all that I need to batch clear and add items and content.
I feel like my hands persom these acitions in my sleep at this point. Especcially from the days I spent in Photoshop in college going back and forth through time like I was reenacting "Back to the Future".
Using CMD + Z to undo, and CMD + SHIFT + Z to redo and go back to the future.
Lately I've also tied these keystrokes to a knob on my Elgato Stream Deck + to go forward and back with ease and quickness. Plus the tactility of the knob adds a bit of delight watching your actions go back and forth.
Spotlight has become the heart of navigating macOS quickly and efficiantly, along with executing basic actions. Once open, you can open windows, applications, find files, basic calculations, start web search, and more with a simple prompt.
Though as great as it is, and for as many times I have used it. I have lately transitioned to a replacement in Raycast. Another option out there with a strong track record is Alfred.
What's great about Raycast too is that you can keymap it to CMD + SPACE so that muscle memory of using Spotlight can be used.
Cycle through open applications with a pop up icon preview with a simple keystroke.
This command became quickly essential to my workflow until I began to more heavily use Spaces and Mission Control. For me they just feel a bit more intuitive since I have them mapped to gestures on my Macbook Pro's Trackpad, external Magic Trackpad, and my Logitech MX Master 3S mouse.
Now for one of the more obscure commands. With CMD + ` (backtick) you can instead of cycling through applications, cycle through the windows of a given application. If you're someone that has multiple Finder windows or documents open, this can allow you to easily scroll through them.
I do enjoy this command, though leately I've also defaulted more to Mission Control along with defaulting applications and Finder windows to open in tabs rather than new windows since it helps me be much more organized.
Take a snap screenshot of your entire screen, which will autosave to the location you have setup. I have mine autosave to a folder in the Pictures folder named Screenshots to easily know where they are all headed and keep my Desktop and Downloads folders as clutter free as possible.
Want to crop in that screenshot? Swap the 3 for a 4 and you'll be able to narrow in your focus by drawing out what you would like to capture. These snaps will go to the same place as fullscreen shots.
Need more control and options? Swap the 3 and 4 for a 5 and you'll open up the screeshot menu. This provides more advanced options such as selecting windows and recording your screen as well. With the screenshot menu opten you can also quickly update the save location for all of your screenshots too.
This is a great command when you need to get back screen real estate in a hurry. It will only minimize the window so you're not losing any work and give you the ability to pop into your next task without the clutter.
To do the reverse, add in the Option key and you will minimize all the oter open windows for a nice focus experience.
Need to close and dismiss a window or tab in a hurry? With CMD + W quickly closes the active window and don't worry, I won't ask what you've got to hide so fast.
Use this in a web browser and go crazy spamming and closing all your tabs in a fury like Patrick Batemen taking out his frustrations after a long work day.
Though if you're like me, make sure you've setup the prompt to save you work if you're closing something that's unsaved, or later regret it.
By adding shift, with SHIFT + CMD + W quickly closes all the open windows and tabs to batch close everything without quiting the application.
Just the window wasn't enough? Then go nuclear with CMD + Q and shut it all down for the active application. This will instantly close the application so make sure you've saved or have the prompt to save setup or risk losing changes.
A part of me misses the Touchbar on MacBooks just to easily select emojis quickly like you would on an iPhone. Since that is now gone, there is a way to quickly bring up a similar picker on your mac with CONTROL + CMD + SPACE. This one action I ave mapped to a key on my Stream Deck + with my limited key layout of the Planck.
Since I've been using Spaces a lot more, tabbed windows have been my bread and butter for staying organized. I try and keep as minimal windows for each application open as possible so I don't lose anything.
Using CMD + TAB you'll open a new tab in any supported application such as Finder or a web browser. Add in a Shift press with CMD + SPACE + T and reopen a tab that you may have accidentally closed in supported applications.
This is great when I'm on the go with my MacBook Pro and have limited screen real estate when not docked to my much larger monitor. Using OPTION + CMD + D the dock will slip away to ease distractions and can be brought back up by the same command or temporarilly by bringing your cursor to the side of your screen you have hidden it.
I lose track of how many times I've used this command on a daily basis. It's become essential when working in large documents, browsing dense web pages, and finding pages and components in my Figma files quickly.
Thankfully just about every application that could use it supports it making it easier to quickly find what you're looking for
Most applications and browsers will support OPTION + CMD + D for opening up a new window, such as in Finder and various web browsers, or creating a new document which is great for multitasking without losing any work on the current file or window you're in.
By adding shift to SHIFT + CMD + N in most browsers such as Safari and Chrome, though it's SHIFT + CMD + P in Zen, my browser of choice.
Whenever I want to quickly get the URL of a page I'm on to share with a colleague, friend, family member, etc... CMD + L let's me quickly access it in a way that's perfect for copying. It's also quite usefull in conjuction with opening new tabs/windows if you're looking to quickly open up a new version of the page you're on for comparrison. I've used this command across browsers with success, and some offer additional commands to get more niche such as auto copying, duplicating tabs, opening in split-views, etc... but this is a tried and true simple one.
This shortcut will pull up each applications help search function to type in relevant search information. This is great for finding hard to remember and buried menu items that don't have shortcuts or finding the shortcut for them. It will also find help topics if that app uses them.
Using COMMAND + ; (Semi-Colon) in word processing apps such as Microsoft Word and Apple Pages, along some others that support it, you can cycle through and correct misspelled words streamlining your edits.
Find a word that just looks a bit funny? CONTROL + COMMAND + D after highlighting a word, you'll bring up the built-in Dictionary to find definition, synonyms, and sometimes Wikipedia excerpts related to that word.
This will open a navigation bar so you can quickly access Finder and jump to varios paths in your file structure quickly by typing paths such as /Applications and ~/Documents
Click or select an item in your file browser and hit space bar and you wil quickly pull up a pop-up window preview of the file. This way you can get a full page peak at the file without needing to open up it's application. Many file types are supported such as office documents, PDFs, images, some design application files, multimedia files, and more.
Pull up a pop-up with detailed information about files or folders, for details such as size, type, and modification date, quickly and without the need to open additional windows or applications.
If you're looking to clean up files quickly, select them in your Finder file browser and use this shortcut CONTROL + CMD + N and move those selected files into a new folder that you can name.
This is basically the CTRL + ALT + DELETE for Macs when you've got an application(s) missbehaving. This will force quite that application. Swap the Q for ESC and open up the force quit menu to tackle multiple applications.
If you want to stop prying eyes and can't just shut the lid (my MacBook Pro is usually already shut and docked), you can with this command lock your screen.
Though for screen locking, I have pivoted to using macOS's Hot Corners to just drag my cursor to the lower left corner to trigger my screen lock and screensaver.
If you share a device or work in a fairly public envrionment, this shorcut can hep presearve security and privacy quickly and easily.
More handy for those on MacBooks to conserve battery when taking a quick break, you can put your display to sleep with the simple OPTION + CMD + POWER command.
For those docked to a display or have an Apple keyboad with a power button for their desktops, a subtle tweak and you can put your display to sleep instead which is great for saving energy if you have multiple and or power hungry displays, as well as helping presearve the display over time for certain OLED models.
This command will trigger a shutdown process along with prompts to save any unsaved files left open.
Need a bit more control? Access important system functions like restart, sleep, or shutdown without navigating menus. This shortcut brings up a dialog box with options such as restart, sleep, or shutdown.
We’ve all been there – your Mac freezes, and nothing seems to work. Keep calm, and try this. This shortcut will bypass the shutdown process and restart your Mac without you navigating menus which is good for devices without a quckly accessible power button like a MacBook.
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