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> It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts compared to all other operating systems. I agree with your other points (including

• tomduncalf 6y ago
  I do actually agree with you in general, felt Windows was easier to navigate with the keyboard - especially menus - but that specific one can be done reasonably easily as long you've enabled "Use keyboard navigation..." in Keyboard preferences > Shortcuts: 1. Cmd-space to get Spotlight, "pref" to match System Preferences (on my machine at least), Enter 2. Search is auto highlighted so type "keyb", down arrow, Enter 3. Tab to focus on tab bar, left/right arrow key to move between tabs (this one is a bit buggy, seems the "Text" tab steals the focus so you have to shift-tab back to the tab bar)
  • snypox 6y ago
    You can do the first one on Windows. Press Windows button then type anything.
    • DangitBobby 6y ago
      My windows install has been failing to make newly installed programs available through search, rendering it entirely useless.
    • knolan 6y ago
      It’s nowhere near as good tho. You frequently have to type the name of the entire utility. On MacOS I can open Disk Utility by using CMD space to open Spotlight and type du. I can do this all as one single shortcut without even looking. On Windows I need to type a lot more and then navigate a list of wordy descriptions in the hope of finding Disk Management. At least now they’ve added Win-X.
      • innocenat 6y ago
        Weird, I find Windows search much better than Spotlight.
  • antipaul 6y ago
    In step 1, just search "keyboard" to go directly to that preference In alfred app (spotlight alternative) you can have fuzzy search so its 3 strokes: `cmd - space` then `kb` to instantly find Keyboard settings (spotlight feels a bit slower than alfred for these kinds of searches)
• ramenmeal 6y ago
  Is there a way to temporarily turn on keyboard navigation? With keyboard navigation turned on it's relatively simple. 1. cmd+space 2. type keyboard 3. press enter 4. click tab until you're on the tab bar, then click right arrow to the tab you want
  • Jakob 6y ago
    Yes, ctrl-F7 (de-)activates keyboard navigation. When activated, the problem of grand parent does not exist. I don’t use a mouse or touch pad normally.
    • awakeasleep 6y ago
      I think the point was "holding tab to cycle through every user interface element until you get to the visual tabs on the page is an exercise in frustration." Also for anyone trying to turn on all-element keyboard navigation, you'll probably need to use ctrl-fn-f7.
• aikinai 6y ago
  I’m not at my computer right now to confirm, but I’m pretty sure nothing is stopping you from doing that on the keyboard alone. Do you have keyboard navigation set to “All controls?” That’s the key and the first thing I do on any new Mac.
• userbinator 6y ago
  On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard. It's also far more discoverable --- if you press Alt, accidentally or otherwise, the menu highlights and you can immediately use the arrow keys to navigate it. The underlined letters (sadly missing by default in later Windows versions) also make things more obvious. There's also this oddity: https://superuser.com/questions/59007/enter-to-open-a-file-in-finder https://superuser.com/questions/59007/enter-to-open-a-file-i... In just about every other graphical file explorer I've ever used, including the DOS ones, Enter opens the selected item. In the Mac Finder, it's Command-O. Yes, I get the fact that it's mnemonic with the others in that list, but it's completely contrary to the customary and rapidly learned behaviour of navigating using the arrow keys and Enter ---which is located very close to the arrow keys, and requires only one hand to operate easily.
  • klodolph 6y ago
    As mentioned in the answer—use command-down. Command-up goes to the parent, command-down goes to the child. You can do the entire thing with arrow keys and command.
  • awakeasleep 6y ago
    macOS has discoverability features that obviate the need for the "press alt" feature. You don't even need to know what menu contains your target. Command-? (command shift /) opens the help menu with fast incremental search through all menubar items, showing you the shortcut of what you're interested in, and also allowing you to tap return to substitute the shortcut.
    • jjoonathan 6y ago
      Also: The menu opened by Command-? can be browsed using Ctrl+P and Ctrl+N, like emacs, instead of the up and down keys if you want to move your hands less. It's a killer combination, allowing you to run menu items with merely a vague notion of their name rather than a memorized jumble of modifier keys.
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• klodolph 6y ago
  As a counterpoint, at least on a Mac, when I’m using the keyboard I can keep my hands near the home row. I can fire up a text editor or IDE and write a bunch of code without moving my hands too much. On Windows, I am constantly moving my right hand over to the INS/DEL/HOME/END/PGUP/PGDN block, because those keys are essential for really simple tasks like moving the cursor to the beginning of the line. And worse yet, I constantly miss the mark and move the cursor to some other part of the document, and have to find my way back again. I find it extremely frustrating. On a Mac, I can ctrl-a to move to the beginning of a line, ctrl-e to move to the end. Nearly anywhere. Losing that convenience is super frustrating.
  • awakeasleep 6y ago
    That is one of the most frustrating aspects of Microsoft software (and websites) on MacOS- Microsoft blocks GNU Readline shortcuts and overwrites many of the more useful ones with the windows conventions. If anyone knows how to turn that 'feature' off and get headline back, I'd love to know
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      I used this: https://kbroman.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/emacs-key-bindings-in-ms-word/ https://kbroman.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/emacs-key-bindings-...
  • dayvid 6y ago
    This is one of the main reason I haven’t used Windows for years. AutoHotKey helps: https://www.autohotkey.com/ https://www.autohotkey.com/
  • alxlu 6y ago
    I feel like most IDEs and Text editors I’ve used allow you to rebind keys to move the cursor across text. As someone who also doesn’t moving from the home row, I tend to use Vim for everything and it’s a lot more powerful and flexible than the rudimentary emacs shortcuts macOS provides. Additionally, you can configure Linux to handle system wide emacs shortcuts as well.
• uzyn 6y ago
  I have to agree. I was a heavy keyboard shortcut user on Windows – since Windows 3.1 days – which I believed was designed with mouse being an optional user interface device. Microsoft continued to bring ahead many of the keyboard shortcuts with Win95, XP and beyond. When I switched to Mac, I was surprised to find how limited Mac keyboard shortcuts are, even till this day. For instance, on Windows one can resize windows with keyboard alone, but not possible, as far as I'm aware, on a Mac. Not only is it lacking, Apple has also been dropping support for some keyboard shortcuts as well, e.g. you used to be able to put a Mac to sleep with Option+Command+Eject, with the latest TouchID MacBook Pro, Eject button is no longer there and the replacement shortcut with the power button is also not working on TouchID power button.
  • p_l 6y ago
    Also, several newer applications, and especially Electron ones, do not support what used to be norm on Mac, namely Emacs-derived navigation keys.
  • antipaul 6y ago
    Yea, it's not always immediately apparent. Here are suggestions for your use cases: For sleep, I use ctrl - cmd - q (shown at this submission's link) Resizing windows with keyboard is indeed the missing piece in macOS. Hence, Magnet* is consistently the top app in App Store (others are Spectacle* or Better Snap tool) --- Spectacle is free and i've been using it for years, even if apparently no longer maintained: https://www.spectacleapp.com https://www.spectacleapp.com Magnet: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12
    • panda88888 6y ago
      I use Rectangle, which iirc is a form of spectacle.
      • deleted 6y ago
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• adrianmonk 6y ago
  Yes, in my experience, macOS scores high on consistency but low on completeness/pervasiveness. In other words, there are fewer things you can do with the keyboard, but it's easier to figure out which keys do them.
• whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  >There are many UI controls (including in dialogs) that just need a mouse or keyboard. Dialogs can be activated by using cmd+the letter of the first action. e.g "File already exists, replace / cancel" cmd+R and cmd+C would work. This is far superior than tabbing around IMHO, but you can do that too, it's an option in settings. >Of course, I'd like to know how something like this can be done faster using the keyboard. - cmd+space - sys <return> - keyb <down> <return> - tab then left and right arrows to choose which tab you want I think this request is a poor workflow example for keyboard shortcuts. Better examples would be workflows that are a chain of repetitive actions in a sequence.
  • mtrower 6y ago
    You know, that's a good point - the conceptual difference between accessibility (mouseless operation), and shortcuts (acceleration of workflow).
• aasasd 6y ago
  Tabbing through the controls like mad, which people keep suggesting, is of course super-tiring and requires keeping track of the subtle focus indicator—and is not seriously a way to use the keyboard. Instead, there's an app called Shortcat that can activate those controls, with you typing the control's text or a part of it. Like a combination of Vimium and Spotlight. Alas, the app is not free. Also, personally instead of Spotlight I prefer Alfred, which can replace many shortcuts with commands, which are way more ‘mnemonic’. E.g. locking the screen is ‘scr’ in Alfred for me, which pops up ‘Screen saver’ as the suggestion.
• ScoutOrgo 6y ago
  You may not have tab access for windows/dialog boxes. I think it is deactivated by default. You can activate with ctrl+f7 or system preferences > keyboard > shortcuts > click radial at the bottom for all controls.
• samstave 6y ago
  I totally agree. In my heyday - I fucking impressed people who watched me navigate through either windows or linux with just the keyboard. I fucking built a ton of AWS infra with just the keyboard - and that included using their UI as welll as AWSCLI I am fond of those memories.
• wsinks 6y ago
  To get to those panes, cmd + space for Spotlight and typing in the pane window works pretty well. Sometimes the index doesn't bring up the answer quickly. But working in the pane once you're there? You've got me, I don't know how to do that without a mouse.
• defined_sb 6y ago
  system preferences -> command + space, type system preferences, enter keyboard settings -> command + space, type system preferences, type keyboard, enter
• clairity 6y ago
  also alt-tabbing between recently active windows of any app (rather than between whole apps, windows of the same app, or tabs of the same app) is curiously difficult. after years of frustration, i finally found that "Move focus to active or next window" is the analogue functionality in macos keyboard shortcuts, and it's now mapped to the slightly-less-awkward alt-cmd-tab, from the very awkward ^F4. it's not quite the same in keeping the stack order however (in some nebulous way i haven't really determined yet).
• csydas 6y ago
  Granted, I had to disable Quicksilver (lovely app) to enable spotlight, but this is as simple as: Summon spotlight to open System Preferences Tab to search Search for your keyboard Settings Hit Return Tab to search Search again Hit Return I get it's not the Windows dynamic (and having just had to spin up a few test server 2008 VMs on vmware today for a specific test, I do appreciate what Windows offers), but it's quite doable. I actually didn't even know how to do it before writing this as I've been used to Windows due to work, but using normal keyboard navigation tools (tab), it was fast to get to what I wanted.
• ridiculous_fish 6y ago
  > If you disagree with my assessment, please try this using only the keyboard (no mouse or trackpad) I found this to be straightforward: 1. cmd-space to open Spotlight, type "syste" and it offers System Preferences, hit return 2. Focus is in its search field. Type "keyboard", then down arrow + return to open Keyboard Prefs. 3. Hit tab to move keyboard focus to the tab bar 4. Use arrow keys to move keyboard focus between different tabs, and space or return to select one
• nivenhuh 6y ago
  Challenge accepted. 1. cmd-space to open spotlight, type in system pref, hit enter 2. default behavior puts you in search, type in "keyboard", down arrow, enter 3. press tab to highlight top tabs, press left/right arrow to select new tab, press space to select (requires the setting "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" which can be found in Keyboard -> Shortcuts.)
  • toast0 6y ago
    > (requires the setting "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" which can be found in Keyboard -> Shortcuts.) Can you turn that on without a pointing device?
    • mmphosis 6y ago
      yes.
    • jesseendahl 6y ago
      Yes! In fact, you don't even need to open System Preferences at all. You can use this global keyboard shortcut to turn on the "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" setting: Control + Fn + F7 Here how to test if it's on or off: 1. Open a new TextEdit doc. 2. Type some random gibberish. 3. Attempt to save the doc. 4. Hit "Tab" and see if anything happens. If the "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" setting is off, nothing will happen. Now, with the "Save" dialog still open.... 5. Do the key combo: Control + Fn + F7 6. Hit "Tab" again — this time you should notice you're moving through the different UI elements. Tab lets you move forward/down through the UI. Tab + Shift lets you move in reverse. If you have System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts open when you do the key combo, you'll notice the checkbox for "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" toggle from checked to unchecked in realtime :)
• i_am_proteus 6y ago
  >macOS is one OS where a user cannot avoid using the mouse or trackpad! It is simple: purchase a trackball.
• cesarb 6y ago
  > On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard. At least on Windows, this is for historical reasons: back in the late 80s and early 90s, when the Windows interface was originally designed, having a mouse (or any other pointing device) was optional. Windows had to be fully usable on computers which came only with a keyboard. (There were a couple of exceptions, IIRC the Paintbrush application which came with Windows required a mouse, for understandable reasons.)
• bromuro 6y ago
  I don’t think that replacing the pointer is the goal of keyboard shortcuts, considering the nice trackpads these machines have equipped