Probably the most useful list of OS X Snow Leopard tweaks and keyboard shortcuts you’ve ever seen
Let’s start off with keyboard shortcuts. Most of these are system wide—that is to say they work in any application built around the Cocoa framework where default system behaviour hasn’t been overridden by application specific keystrokes, i.e., any application that supports Services or doesn’t override standard Apple conventions for behaviour and operation. This includes all the bundled applications in the iLife suite, iWork, Safari, TextEdit, Stickies and Finder, including files and folders, Open and Save dialogue boxes and the help system.
Key
⌃ + F3 – Enables keyboard navigation of the Dock. Highlight a Dock item using left and right arrow keys, choose a selection using the Return key or invoke the equivalent of the right-click menu using the up arrow key. Holding ⌥ and left or right arrow keys swap nudges the current selection with its neighbouring icon. Escape cancels.
⌘ + escape – Opens the Front Row media player.
⌘ + F5 – Enables / Disables Voiceover.
⌘ + ⌥ + Spacebar – Switches to Finder and opens advanced Spotlight search window.
⇧ + ⌘ + 3 – Saves a PNG on the desktop of the current desktop and any additional monitors. Hold ⌃ to instead place the screenshot in the clipboard.
⇧ + ⌘ + 4 – Changes the mouse to a crosshairs selection. Drag around an area of the screen to save that selection as a PNG image file named ‘Screenshot + today’s date and time’ on the Desktop, or hit the spacebar to select an entire window. You can also take a screenshot of only the desktop icons, by ensuring to pass through any one of them before choosing, with the desktop background image as an alpha channel, or inversely you can snap only the desktop background image without the desktop icons visible in the foreground by clicking in any blank area of the screen. Hold ⌃ to place the screenshot in the clipboard instead of into a PNG file. Also, you can hold a combination of the ⌥, ⌘ and ⇧ to proportionately resize the selection before releasing the mouse. Escape key cancels.
⌘ + ⌃ + D – Pops open a short dictionary definition of any word under the mouse. Use it to quickly look up a word you’re unfamiliar with or if you simply want to check you’ve used a word in the right context when working on a document. You can also access the full built-in Dictionary / Thesaurus / Wikipedia application by clicking More or by choosing from the menu in the lower lefthand corner of the box itself.
⌘ + ⇧ + L – Instantly searches Google with the current text selection using Safari in a new tab.
⌥ + Brightness up / down – Opens the Display Preference panel.
⌥ + ⇧ + Brightness up / down increments / decrements the display brightness by units of 1, as opposed to 10.
⌥ + Volume up / down – Opens the Sound System Preference panel.
⌥ + ⇧ + Volume up / down increments / decrements the sound output by units of 1, as opposed to 10.
⌘ + , (comma) – Opens application preferences.
⌃ + Eject – Opens the Sleep, Shutdown, Restart dialogue box.
⌃ + ⇧ + Eject – Instantly blanks all screens.
⌘ + ⇧ + Y – Makes any selected text a new sticky note.
⌘ + ⌥ + escape – Opens the Force Quit pane—similar to Control + Alt + Delete for Microsoft Windows task manager or NT log-on. Yeah, only Microsoft would make the shortcut key for panic the same as the one to start a new session. Dick heads.
⌘ + M – Minimises the current application to the Dock.
⌘ + ⇧ + Q – Logs out of the current user and presents the log-in screen.
⌘ + ⌥ + ⌃ + 8 – Inverts the screen colours. Handy for reading black on white text or to quickly check the gamma for too-close-to-call colour shades in brightly lit environments.
⌘ + T – In any rich text input area, e.g., Pages or TextEdit, but not a browser text input area, this opens the advanced Font Pane, which enables fine control over a wide variety of text output controls from font family to size and glyph.
⌥ + arrow keys left or right – In any text input area enables whole word skipping.
⌥ + arrow keys up or down – In any text input area enables whole paragraph skipping.
⌥ + ⇧ + arrow keys left or right – In any text input area enables highlighting of the preceding or proceeding word.
⌥ + ⇧ + arrow keys up or down – In any text input area enables highlighting of the preceding or proceeding paragraph.
⌥ + backspace – In any text selection area deletes the previous word.
⌥ + delete – In any text selection area deletes the proceeding word.
⌘ + H – Hide the current application and switch to the previous.
⌘ + ⌥ + H – Hide all but the current application.
In versions previous to Snow Leopard, double-clicking any window’s Toolbar minimised it to the Dock. In OS X 10.6 you can minimise all open windows to the specific application icon and open them again using Exposé.
- Open the Dock System Preferences panel by either right-clicking on the dividing line between Dock Folders on the right side of the Dock and Application Icons on the right side of the dock, or open System Preferences > Dock from the Apple Menu.
- Check the button marked “Minimize [sic] windows into application icon” and close Dock Preferences
- With several windows open in Finder, either double click the title bar of any one of them or ⌘ + M to minimise it into the Finder Dock icon. Hit F10 to invoke Exposé and you will see the currently visible windows above a dividing line, below which is the Finder window you’ve just minimised.
- Select the minimised window and it will re-open in Finder.
- Now ⌥ + double-click or ⌥ + ⌘ + M any Finder window and all open windows will minimise into the Finder Dock icon.
- Invoke F10 Exposé once again to navigate all minimised windows for the current application.
If you have more than one set of windows minimised, i.e., more than one application with minimised windows into the Dock you can use F9 to display all currently minimised windows for all applications and switch to them using TAB. Holding ⌥ + clicking any minimised window in Exposé will re-open all minimised windows for that application.
Finder Keystrokes.
⌘ + T – Adds all currently selected items to the Sidebar.
⌘ + I – Shows the information panel for all currently selected Finder item.
⌘ + ⌥ + I – Shows a floating information pane for the current Finder selection.
⌘ + ⇧ + Backspace – Empty Trash.
⌘ + ⇧ + D – Opens the Desktop in a new window. Also works in Open and Save dialogue boxes.
⌘ + ⇧ + A – Opens the Applications folder in a new window. Also works in Open and Save dialogue boxes.
⌘ + ⇧ + C – Opens the root directory, showing all your connected drives and network connections. Also works in Open and Save dialogue boxes. Also works in Open and Save dialogue boxes.
⌘ + ⇧ + U – Opens the Utilities folder, inside the Applications folder. Also works in Open and Save dialogue boxes.
⌘ + ⇧ + O – Opens the Documents folder. Doesn’t for some reason work in Open and Save dialogue boxes.
⌘ + ⇧ + K – Opens a new Finder window showing all Network connections.
⌘ + ⇧ + H – Opens your Home folder.
⌘ + ⇧ + G – Allows you to enter the full path to any directory in the UNIX tree structure.
⌘ + ⇧ + F – Opens Spotlight in a new advanced search window.
⌘ + 1, 2, 3 or 4 – Switches between Icon, List, Column and Coverflow views of the current window.
⌥ + ⌘ + S – Hide sidebar of the current window.
⌥ + ⌘ + T – Hide sidebar and toolbar of the current window.
⌥ + ⌘ + Y – Show current selection in Fullscreen QuickLook.
⌥ + ⌘ + W – Close all open windows, information panes and preferences (also works in applications).
⌘ + J – Opens and closes the View Options pane for the current window, which can be used to set the default view of newly opened Finder windows.
⌃ + ⌘ + 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – Sort current window by name, date modified, date created, size, kind and label—assuming all 6 view options are enabled in View Options.
The ⌥ (or alt) key is a really useful modifier key in most Cocoa applications. For example, in Finder, holding it down with a file of a certain type selected and choosing “Always open with” from the File Menu is much quicker than the older OS X method of changing which application opens a file by default, of having to open Get Info… (⌘ + I) choosing “Always open with” from the pop-down menu, and selecting “Don’t show this again”.
The ⌥ key modifier also performs the following:
- Suppresses the “are you sure” confirmation box in Safari ‘private browsing mode’
- Suppresses the “are you sure” dialogue box when choosing Restart or Shutdown from the Apple Menu
- Opens System Profiler instead of ‘About This Mac’ in the Apple Menu
- Has the opposite effect of Select All (⌘ + A); deselects all in Finder
Open / Save dialogue boxes
In the Media Sidebar you can invoke a QuickLook preview of Photographs, Videos and Music files by tapping the Spacebar as you would in Finder.
⌘ + ⇧ + D – Switch to Desktop.
⌘ + ⇧ + N – New Folder.
⌘ + 1, 2, 3 – Switches between Icon, List and Column view.
Full Finder-like file details are now available in Open / Save dialog boxes
You can also double click the dividing line between any column view item to snap to the longest width of that column. This also now works in Finder after being originally introduced in iTunes for OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Dragging and dropping any icon from inside the Open / Save dialogue box into the Desktop or into a Finder window creates a shortcut to that file or folder. You can also drag and drop photos, videos and audio files from the Media sidebar onto the desktop to make a copy of any file in your iTunes Music Library, iPhoto Library or iMovie Library.
Now let’s look at some modifier keys which when used in combination with the mouse or other keystrokes open extra functions.
⌃ + mouse scroll – Zooms the entire screen in and out. You can set how this behaves by clicking Options in the Mouse System Preferences pane or you can zoom the screen using ⌥ + ⌘ + 8 to turn on / off Zoom controls in the Universal Access System Preferences panel followed by ⌥ + ⌘ + [the minus key] or [the plus key] on the number pad.
⌘ + click on any window title bar – Shows the full path leading up to the current window. Handy in Safari for traversing the full path of web addresses. Also works in Finder and almost all application windows that use the standard OS X presentation layer, for showing the full path which leads up to the last known save location of the currently displayed document. Clicking in any of the folders leading up to the current selection opens it in Finder.
Exposé + TAB – By default the Function keys across the top of the keyboard from F8 to F12 invoke Spaces, All currently visible windows, All windows of the current application, Hide all windows and Dashboard. With the exception of Dashboard, hitting the TAB key after invoking Exposé will have the following effect:
- In Spaces each Space will be selected. Hitting Return selects that Space. Hitting either F9 or F10 works as normal, but without exiting Spaces.
- Hitting F9 followed by TAB switches one by one between each currently visible application.
- Hitting F10 followed by TAB one by one between each currently visible window in the current application.
Spaces and Exposé – As well as being able to swap the order of Spaces by dragging inside Spaces and moving one Space on top of the other, you can also invoke F9 and F10 Exposé inside Spaces. You can also move individual application windows around inside Spaces.
⌘ + Click – On any item in the dock to show the location of that file or folder in Finder.
⌘ + Double-click any folder in Finder to open it in a new window.
⌥ + Double-click any folder in Finder to open it in a new window and close the one behind it.
⌥ + Click from any application, including Finder, to any other application to hide the application you’re leaving.
⌘ + ⌥ + Drag and drop any icon in Finder to create a shortcut.
⌘ + click + drag any icon indicator item in the menu bar to change the order or remove it altogether.
⌥ + click the Airport icon in the menu bar to show more detailed information about available WiFi hotspots.
User defined System behaviours.
Right-click on a text selection in any text input area and choose Substitutions > Show Substitutions. This opens the Substitutions settings box which includes the option to set Text Preferences, which when clicked opens the Language and Text System Preferences Panel. In here you can set a number of keywords in the righthand side of the panel that will automatically be replaced with the text you enter in the lefthand side of the panel.
By example, although turned off by default, you can see that OS X already has 1 / 2 (without the spaces) set to become ½—which is a standard unicode symbol for half that will therefore show up correctly even on non-Apple operating systems. Similarly typing a ‘c’ inside an open and closed bracket will become the copyright © unicode symbol, typing ‘t’ and ‘m’ will become the ™ trademark symbol and brackets around a lower case ‘r’ will produce the registered trade mark ® unicode character et cetera.
Note: Certain input boxes are smart enough to ignore Substitutions. For example Spotlight and Safari’s Google search bar will not alter the text you input, rather simply function as normal.
Characters Pane (⌘ + ⌥ + T)
In any text input area hit ⌘ + ⌥ + T. This pane enables you to either manually find or search for a whole range of technical symbols and mathematical expressions in the unicode character pallet, by category, radical or from a list of previously defined favourites. This also includes an extensive list of Korean, Japanese and Chinese characters.
Find the symbol you want to insert and in the Language and Text System Preferences Panel choose to Add a new Symbol and Text Substitution by clicking the + (plus) icon beneath the list of defaults. In the first column type the key combination you would like the system to automatically replace with the symbol on the second column, which you enter by double clicking it in the Characters Pane.
For example the place of interest sign, or ⌘ (command) symbol, also known as the Apple Key (from the fact that up until the early 2000’s standard Apple keyboards had the corporate logo stamped on them) is located in the Symbols section of the Character Pane under Technical Symbols. Similarly the euro symbol € is in the Currency section, the ❝ and ❞ heavy double comma quotation mark ornaments are in the Punctuation section and ʥ, θ and æ are in the Phonetic Symbols category.
Terminal hacks
Open the Terminal application from inside the Utilities folder, inside the Applications folder and paste these commands into the command line:
To place a grey highlight behind items in the Stacks View in the Dock:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean YES
killall Dock
To set the maximum size of icons in the Magnified dock. (Warning! Don’t set any higher than 512):
defaults write com.apple.dock largesize -int 512
killall Dock
To change the format of screenshot images from PNG to JPG, or GIF:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
or
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png
or
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type gif
Drag a Widget out of the Dashboard onto the regular Desktop by hitting F12 to close Dashboard when you have a Widget selected. Reverse the process to put it away again:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard demoed YES
And finally some quick and dirty practical tips. You should experiment with finding your own quick work-arounds and let the rest of us know about them in the comments box below.
You can drag any title bar icon, shortcut, file or folder from the Finder into any Open or Save dialogue box inside any application to instantly open that location, rather than having to manually find folders from inside the Open / Save dialog box itself.
You can drag and drop any selection between applications using the ⌘ + TAB application switcher. This is useful for moving and copying text between open documents in different applications or for choosing a file from the Finder to open in an application Open File dialogue box. Anything you can drag and drop from either an application to the Finder or from the Finder to an application can be held onto under the mouse while you ⌘ + TAB application switch.
Tapping the spacebar when you hold a selection of files over a folder icon will spring open that folder, without having to double-click it to open.
The ⌘ + TAB application switcher also supports certain modifier commands, such as H to hide the currently highlighted application or Q to quit the currently highlighted application. This means you don’t have to switch to an application you’re no longer using to close it or hide it from view.
If you want to drop a selection without moving it, for example if you have a large amount of files selected and currently ‘under’ the mouse, if you drop the selection on the menu bar at the top of the screen your mouse will drop the selection back where it came from rather than move or copy it. This is especially handy if you want to let go of something that would otherwise take a long time to carry out—such as accidentally grabbing a large selection of files which you don’t really want to.
Just as you can drag and drop files and folders you want to regularly access onto the Dock, so you can also drag, hold and drop them onto the top toolbar of any Finder window. You can rearrange Finder and application toolbar areas with the right-click Customise menu, or pop an icon out of the toolbar by holding down ⌘ when you drag it out of the toolbar area. Here’s a short video:
As of Snow Leopard, QuickLook enables you to preview video and audio files in the background, without them stopping once you switch away from Finder. You can also skip and pause audio and video recordings in Icon Preview by opening QuickLook, but as soon as the current Icon Preview goes out of view playback stops. Here’s another short video:
If you have any tips and tricks you want to share, please feel free to leave a comment below. Enjoy!
Slideshow selection in fullscreen
Open Terminal.app from the Applications > Utilities folder.
