[HOWTO] - Cool Keyboard/Mouse Combos

zootbobbalu

Registered
1 New item added 4/27/01
3 New items added 4/23/01
1 New item added 9/6/01
New items found in "Macworld's 50 Top Mac OS X Tips & Unix Tricks" 4/19/02
1 New items added 8/01/02
2 New items added 8/24/02
1 New item added 9/05/02
1 New item added 11/26/02

////////////////////// new items ///////////////////////////

new>>> Quick Key to take a snapshot of a portion of your display!!

Here's a cool trick MrNivit1 (11/26/02) stumbled upon while messing around with keyboard combinations. Hold down command-shift-4 and the cursor will turn into a target. Select an area of the screen (i.e. click, drag to draw a box, release) and a new graphic file with an image of the area you selected will appear on the desktop (if the picture file isn't automatically placed on your desktop check your "Desktop" folder in your home directory for the file). MrNivit guesses Apple was kind enough to bring this easter egg from OS9 (apple-shift-3 will give you a picture of the entire screen in OS9) to OSX.

new>>> Jaguar Global Keyboard shortcut

Cmd~, as of 10.2, is reserved by Apple for cycling through an application\'s windows. This keystroke combo works everywhere, even overriding some applications\' use of the keystroke combo (see also, Adobe Photoshop. Adobe posted a patch for PS which \"unhooks\" this keystroke for PS users accustomed to using it.)

toddsnc (http://www.macosxhints.com)

new>>> keyboard shortcuts in Jaguar finder

To open Application folder (Jaguar)
Command + Shift + A

To open Favorites folder (Jaguar)
Command + Shift + F

///////////////////// Terminal /////////////////////////////

- open a terminal window (start a session)
- if you want to change the working directory to a directory
that is deep in many folders:

a. type cd followed by a space.
b. click on an active finder window and drag and
drop the folder onto the terminal window.
c. smile after you see the full path automatically
filled in after %:cd

- you can do this with any command line tool, like if
you wanted to open a file in vi, just type vi(space)
and drag and drop the file onto the terminal window.


////////////////////// Start Up ////////////////////////////

Command + "V" pressed while Mac OS X boots will show
a text screen that scrolls boot status info. (Macworld's 50 Top Mac OS X Tips)

Command + "S" pressed while Mac OS X boots will scroll boot
info and then stop with a command prompt (just like a command prompt in
a terminal window). You can login from here before Aqua loads.

////////////////////// Finder Window //////////////////////////

The option key changes some Finder Menu Items in real time.
1. Click on the "File" Menu and leave it pulled down.
2. Press the option key, and watch the Close Window menu item
change to Close All in real time.
note: try this in the Window Menu. (Macworld's 50 Top Mac OS X Tips)

To select a group of files that appear together in a list view:
1. Click on first file of group
2. Shift + Click on last file of group

To select a group of files that do not appear together in a list view:
1. Command + Click on any file that you want to
select/deselect into or out of a group
2. Repeat Step 1 to add/remove any file to or from the group
3. Command + Drag selects/deselects items the mouse
arrow moves over

note: Holding the Command key down forces all items
to freeze so that items can only be selected/deselected
with the mouse and not moved around.

To turn the mouse arrow into a mouse hand (like the hand in
Photoshop):
1. Option + Click in any "white space" of a Finder Window
in listview mode, then drag the contents around
(Klink 4/23/01)


/////////////////// Finder Window Toolbar ////////////////////

To move/remove item in toolbar:
Command + Click + Drag

To edit toolbar:
Shift + Click top right button in Finder Window


////////////// IE /////////////

To change the mouse arrow into a hand in a window (like
the photoshop hand) so you can move the page around:
Command + Drag

note: This feature was in IE before the Mac OS X version, but
I just wanted to point it out. I hope Apple gets all developers
to agree on a uniform method to convert the mouse arrow to
a hand. Just a thought because this method beats scoll bar
arrows hands down ;-)

//////////////// Any Window /////////////

I just found a great way to hide XDarwin without having
to use a command key or to select Hide XDarwin from the XDarwin
menu. Just hold the option key down while you click on another window
or the desktop.

To dock all windows owned by a particular application at once:
Command + Option + Yellow Minus Button
Option + Yellow Minus Button

To move/resize/scroll a window that is behind an active window
without changing the statis of the active window (endian 4/23/01)
Command + Click on the control of the background window

note 1: to move a window in background, Command + Drag
the title bar of the background window.
note 2: resizing and scrolling in background doesn't always
work


You can set the scroll bar behavior in the System Preferences
window to either jump to a location in the scroll bar or to jump
one page up or down, but both options are available to you
all the time. The opposite behavior of what you set in your System
Preferences can be performed by holding the Option key down
when you click on the scroll bar. (Matt/VGZ 4/23/01)

//////////////// Dock ///////////////

To freeze dock items so that they do not move around when you want to drop an item onto an icon in the dock:
Command + Option + Drag item onto dock item

note: this method forces an application to attemp to
open an item dropped onto the application's
icon in the dock

To get any item in the Dock to pop open a menu (Folder/HD icons
pop open a quasi AppleMenu, applications pop open a menu with
options to quit, show or select a window and the trash can pops
open the option to empty):
Control + Click on the Dock icon

note: click/hold on any item in the Dock does the same thing,
but this is a bit slower

To have the Finder show you where a dock item is located:
Command + Click item

To hide all other windows and show the windows of a running application:
Command + Option + Click on the application icon in the dock

To hide the windows of the application in foreground and bring the windows of another application into foreground:
Option + Click on the application icon in the dock

note: This allows you to switch between two applications
without hiding things like Finder Windows or the
Internet Connect status window.

I would like keep this posting organized, so if anyone has any corrections or additions, could you please email me at:

zootbobbalu@yahoo.com
 
To ask an app to open a file it doesn't necessarily know how to open you can drag the file to the app's icon in the dock and press command and option.
 
Add this to your list zootbobbalu.

In a Finder window, while in list view mode, Option + Click in "white space" (inside the window which does not contain text) to change the pointer to a grab hand. You can now navigate on the horizontal and vertical planes instead of using the scroll bars.
 
To resize or scroll a background window, hold down command while you click or drag the appropriate control
 
Option clicking in the scroll-bar reverses the option set in System Preferences. For example if you have it set to scroll by 1 page it will scroll to where you option-clicked.
 
For some reason command click-through only works for Carbon title bars, not for anything else in Carbon apps. I consider this a bug, perhaps everybody ought to send feedback.
 
I am glad to see that Apple has finally adopted some of the keyboard and file copy functions from Windows.

Namely, the command-move from disk to disk is particular nice; now I can specify exactly what kind of drag action on an object I want whether it's a straight copy, move, or create shortcut.

Being able to copy and paste objects other than just text in the Finder is a great thing as well; one thing that would make everything consistent is the ability to cut and paste (the keyboard equivalent of command-drag) objects.

Cheers.
 
This is great! I've learned more in the past 3 minutes than anybody else would in a few weeks!
Thanks guys, keep 'em coming! :)
 
Well, I was trying the old trick of holding down the spacebar to turn the pointer into a hand in IE (don't know why I thought that would work), and just discovered that pressing the spacebar once scrolls a page down one page at a time!
 
Originally posted by legacyb4
I am glad to see that Apple has finally adopted some of the keyboard and file copy functions from Windows.

Namely, the command-move from disk to disk is particular nice; now I can specify exactly what kind of drag action on an object I want whether it's a straight copy, move, or create shortcut.

Being able to copy and paste objects other than just text in the Finder is a great thing as well; one thing that would make everything consistent is the ability to cut and paste (the keyboard equivalent of command-drag) objects.

Cheers.

uuuuh, this is an ancient MacOS feature. Where have you been?
 
Another one for the dock: putting the cursor over the bar dividing the applications from the documents, hold the option key and resize the dock. This forces the dock to resize in sizes of 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, etc.
 
to get the hand in the Finder, you need to:

command + option + click

in an icon-view or list-view Finder window. (OS X 10.1.5, build 5S66) This is not a new Mac OS feature as I used this quite often in Mac OS 8.6, if I remember right.
 
While fooling around I accidently option click the desktop and the active window disappeared. To bring back the window I just click the app icon on the dock and it came back.
 
woops! Sorry I meant active application not window. It "turns off" the active application window.
 
Originally posted by RMB
While fooling around I accidently option click the desktop and the active window disappeared. To bring back the window I just click the app icon on the dock and it came back.

Option-click a background app will hide the foreground app.

This is also an ancient gesture, as most of the ones on this forum are.
 
Here's a couple of keyboard shortcuts I've come across for Jaguar.

To open Application folder (Jaguar)
Command + Shift + A

To open Favorites folder (Jaguar)
Command + Shift + F
 
Here's a cool trick I stumbled upon while messing around with keyboard combinations. Hold down command-shift-4 and the cursor will turn into a target. Select an area of the screen (i.e. click, drag to draw a box, release) and a new graphic file with an image of the area you selected will appear on the desktop. I guess Apple was kind enough to bring this easter egg from OS9 (apple-shift-3 will give you a picture of the entire screen in OS9) to OSX. :p
 
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