Custom Keyboard Shortcuts in OS X

Posted by Van Lam on 11/10/07 in Featured, Tips & Tricks, Tutorial

The one-two punch of the mouse and GUI are an intuitive duet, but sometimes you just want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Keyboard shortcuts give you that.

While OS X offers keyboard shortcuts for most commands in the menu bar, there are a few orphaned commands worth adopting. Not a problem though, because OS X allows you to easily adopt any menu bar function and map it to a keyboard command, without the assistance of any third party software.

To access this often forgotten tool, simply navigate your way into the ‘Keyboard & Mouse’ preference pane and tab over to ‘Keyboard Shortcuts.’ When you click on the plus sign, you’ll be presented with three inputs.

Keyboard-shortcuts-2

First select which application you want to commandeer. You can have your new keyboard shortcut effect a certain application, or work globally across all applications. The great thing about this trick is that you can also remap existing keyboard shortcuts. Secondly, choose which menu command to map by simply typing the menu title. For example, to add a keyboard shortcut for the ‘Zoom’ command under the ‘Window’ menu, simply enter “Zoom.” Finally, decide what you want the keyboard command to be.

It’s that simple. Restart the application and marvel at your new custom keyboard command. What are some of your essential custom keyboard commands in OS X?

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7 Comment(s)

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Ed Eubanks said on

November 10th, 2007 at 10:05 am

I’ve set up a command to un-minimize Mail and iCal from the doc. I usually leave these apps open all the time, but don’t always want them showing, of course. Since Command-M minimizes both, then I’ve set Shift-Command-M to “un-minimize”. (It’s a little trickier in Mail, by the way– you have to use the Message Viewer menu command).

I’ve been re-thinking this, actually, and wondering if I should set one of my Spaces to a “productivity” or PIM space, housing Mail, iCal, Address Book, and a GTD app. The windows could of course stay open all the time, and I would use the (ready-built) menu commands to open it.

Superdotman said on

November 10th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

Does this post indicate that Leopard fixes the zoom button in the Finder and Safari?
*crosses fingers*

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Ketone Burner said on

November 11th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

I tried to map the Link>Add in Mail.app 3.0 in Leopard to Cmd-Ctrl-Shft-/ to no avail. Is there a away to map a menu command when it is nested on level deep like Link>Add under the Edit menu in Mail.app 3.0 in Leopard?

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Van Lam said on

November 14th, 2007 at 4:36 pm

Ketone:

Be sure type in the menu command exactly as it appears. In your case, add the ellipsis after the “Add”

Add…

And not:

Add

Phil Crosby said on

December 14th, 2007 at 8:34 pm

The dialog is frustratingly broken. It doesn’t accept ctrl+tab or option+tab.

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alazio said on

April 9th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

genius. works like a charm.

thanks so much!

QA said on

July 8th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

Anyone know how to use this to maximize windows that have been minimized to the dock?

Also, ProTools doesn’t respond to the Hide command (Cmd+H), and the method described above doesn’t fix this either because ProTools won’t allow it to be manually assigned. Any suggestions? (I know, “switch to Logic”, right?)