Some of the special characters used here might not show up correctly for some of you—so I’m sorry about that. I’ve been getting an education from Lucy on how annoying Mac people are about that sort of thing sometimes and it is slowly sinking in—I promise!

But I am what I am—a Mac user—and, call me old fashioned, but every now and then I do like to blog on the subject with the assumption at least some of my readers find my experience of using Apple’s OS ever since the heady days of System 7, useful and interesting—even helpful.

So, especially for those of you using computers, instead of Windows, here’s some key combos and other built-in helper applications you might not already know about.

Open System Preferences > International > Input Menu and check the “Show Input Menu in Menu Bar” box. You should now see the flag of the country you have localised your system to in the top right of the screen. In it there are two menus that show the keyboard and the character pallet. You can search the character pallet by the name of the special keyboard symbol you want to use, just like searching the rest of the system with Spotlight.

Open System Preferences > International > Input Menu and check the “Show Input Menu in Menu Bar” box. You should now see the flag of the country you have localised your system to in the top right of the screen. In it there are two menus that show the keyboard and the character pallet. You can search the character pallet by the name of the special keyboard symbol you want to use, just like searching the rest of the system with Spotlight. ⌘+⇧+L = Searches Google with the currently highlighted text. Works for any object containing text currently selected—even icons and non-editable text in dialogue boxes.

= Searches Google with the currently highlighted text. Works for any object containing text currently selected—even icons and non-editable text in dialogue boxes. ⌃+⎇+⌘+8 = Inverses the screen, so white becomes black and so on. This is ideal for reading black text on a white background in web pages that have been designed the other way around.

= Inverses the screen, so white becomes black and so on. This is ideal for reading black text on a white background in web pages that have been designed the other way around. ⌃+Any Key on the Number Pad = Moves to that Space, as enabled in the Spaces System Preferences pane

= Moves to that Space, as enabled in the Spaces System Preferences pane ⌘+⎇+D = Show / Hide the dock

= Show / Hide the dock ⌃+⏏ = Shows the Sleep / Shutdown / Restart box, equivalent to the defunct ⎋ keyboard power key from the non-Steve Jobs Macs of the 80’s and 90’s.

= Shows the Sleep / Shutdown / Restart box, equivalent to the defunct ⎋ keyboard power key from the non-Steve Jobs Macs of the 80’s and 90’s. ⌘+` = Cycles through all currently open windows in the current application and backwards through the list of currently open programs in the ⌘+TAB application switcher.

= Cycles through all currently open windows in the current application and backwards through the list of currently open programs in the application switcher. ⌘+␛ = Opens Front Row

= Opens Front Row ⎇+⌘+␠ = Opens Spotlight in a new Finder window

= Opens Spotlight in a new Finder window ⎇+⇧+Volume Controls = Increments and decrements the system volume by single units, instead of in tens. This is particularly useful for late-at-night, when you don’t want the sound very loud, but can’t inch between slightly too loud and completely off, for sound recordings which have been maximised in the mastering stage and tend to ‘pump’ at even very low volume settings.

= Increments and decrements the system volume by single units, instead of in tens. This is particularly useful for late-at-night, when you don’t want the sound very loud, but can’t inch between slightly too loud and completely off, for sound recordings which have been maximised in the mastering stage and tend to ‘pump’ at even very low volume settings. ⌥+⌦ or ⌥+⌫ = Delete the whole word ahead of or behind the cursor.

or = Delete the whole word ahead of or behind the cursor. ⌃+Mouse Scroll Wheel = Magnify the screen following the mouse. This is especially useful for watching videos on sites which haven’t enabled full screen mode, or where (like YouTube) even full screen mode includes a distracting ‘now line’ at the foot of the screen.

= Magnify the screen following the mouse. This is especially useful for watching videos on sites which haven’t enabled full screen mode, or where (like YouTube) even full screen mode includes a distracting ‘now line’ at the foot of the screen. ⇧+Volume controls = temporarily enables System Feedback for setting the volume control when no sound is playing

= temporarily enables System Feedback for setting the volume control when no sound is playing ⌘+C = With Spaces open collects all Spaces into desktop number one.

= With Spaces open collects all Spaces into desktop number one. ⌘+⌥+W = Closes all open Finder windows. Also works with open document windows in applications—handy for closing and saving multiple Photoshop and OpenOffice workspaces.

Don’t forget you can also add a shortcut key for any application which you use regularly using the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the System Preferences for Keyboard and Mouse. For example, I find it annoying that—unlike almost every other application in the iLife suite—the main key shortcut for “Show Main Window” in iTunes isn’t ⌘+1, but ⌘+⌥+1, so I’ve edited mine back to how it should be. Custom keyboard shortcuts take primacy over default system ones—but this rather annoyingly changes back to default if an application update is released—which in the case of iTunes is once every five seconds.

Generally, though, custom keyboard shortcuts are extremely useful and you can use them to add Apple-like shortcuts to applications which should already have them—like Firefox browser, for example. I’ve set mine to behave similar to Safari for things like “Send page as link” with ⌘+⇧+I.

Application specific

Safari

⌘+L = In any browser selects and highlights the address bar (also works in Firefox, Camino, Opera).

= In any browser selects and highlights the address bar (also works in Firefox, Camino, Opera). ⌘+1 to 0 top row number keys = Opens links in the bookmarks bar, so ⌘+T followed by ⌘+1 opens bbc.co.uk/news in a new tab or ⌘+2 sends the current page as a new submission to reddit.com and so on. Naturally these are unique to how you have bookmarks arranged 1 to 10 on your bookmarks bar.

= Opens links in the bookmarks bar, so followed by opens bbc.co.uk/news in a new tab or sends the current page as a new submission to reddit.com and so on. Naturally these are unique to how you have bookmarks arranged 1 to 10 on your bookmarks bar. ⌘+⇧+] or [ = move to next / previous tab. Also without the ⇧ key, forwards and backwards in current tab history.

= move to next / previous tab. Also without the ⇧ key, forwards and backwards in current tab history. You can also add useful keyboard shortcuts not included by default using the Keyboard and Mouse System Preferences Pane for things like ‘Move Tab to New Windows’ (⌘+⌥+⌃+M) and ‘Reopen all windows from last session’ (⌘+⌥+⌃+R) – which is very useful if you want to restart the machine but without having to save all your currently open browser windows in bookmarks—similar to session saving in Firefox browser.

Finder

⌘+⇧+N = New folder

= New folder ⌘+⌥+Y = Show current selection in slideshow.

= Show current selection in slideshow. ⌘+1 or 2 or 3 or 4 = Show current window in the four different viewing modes.

= Show current window in the four different viewing modes. ⌘+↑ or ↓ = Move up to the parent directory or go back

= Move up to the parent directory or go back ⌘+Left Click on any Finder title = Shows the current folder’s full directory path. Also works in Safari for the current web page tab.

= Shows the current folder’s full directory path. Also works in Safari for the current web page tab. Drag and hold any application icon or folder over the top of any Finder window and after a second you can drop shortcut buttons, similar to using the Dock. This is one of many interface enhancements OS X inherited from NeXT, when Apple bought the company as a condition of Steve Jobs, NeXT’s founder, returning to Apple in the late 1990’s.

⌘+T = Adds the current selection to the sidebar

= Adds the current selection to the sidebar ⌘+⌥+T = Shows the current Finder window in classic mode.

Key:

⌘ – Command, also known as the  key.

⌃ – Control or CRTL

⎇ – Alt or Option

⇧ – Shift

␠ – Spacebar

I always enjoy learning more about OS X’s undocumented features. If you know more please feel free to leave a comment below.

EDIT:

I’d heard the name ycombinator.com before, but never checked it out. Then when the above article did well in the blog-o-sphere I got a ping back from someone who’d posted it there and discovered a bustling community which doesn’t yet appear to have suffered the reddit / digg effect of over popularity.

Here’s a summary of the comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404866 posted there so far:

Thanks to GHFigs for this in-line Dictionary key combo:

⌘+⌃+D = Opens Dictionary over the top of the current selection. Keep ⌃+⌘ held down for float over mouse follow Dictionary.

Thanks to jacobolus for these links to OS X system key bindings:

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/system-bindings.html

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html

Thanks also to zzzmarcus for these Control key modifiers:

ctrl+f – move one character forward

ctrl+v – move one character backwards

ctrl+n – next line

ctrl+p – previous line

ctrl+k – delete to the end of the line

ctrl+d – delete the next character

ctrl+h – delete the previous character (backspace)

ctrl+o – insert a newline below the current

Also thanks to dchest for reminding me of this one:

⌘+⌃+⌥+. or , (that’s a period full stop and a comma) = Increment / decrement main display gamma.