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What’s better about keyboard shortcuts on Windows? MacOS has a very rich set of keyboard shortcuts, the prevailing culture is for third-party apps to have them

What’s better about keyboard shortcuts on Windows? MacOS has a very rich set of keyboard shortcuts, the prevailing culture is for third-party apps to have them too, and you can map custom shortcuts to any command accessible in a menu. I haven’t used Windows extensively since 2015, but at least back then I had to have a suite of AutoHotKey scripts just to get close to native MacOS functionality.

IggleSniggle 5y ago
My biggest issue with macOS keyboard shortcuts and gestures (and it’s a much worse issue on iOS) is discoverability. Once you know them, though, they do work almost everywhere.
- aikinai 5y ago
  On MacOS, every menu item has the keyboard shortcut displayed to the right, even the ones you’ve custom assigned. On iOS this is about to get a lot better too; on iOS/iPadOS 15, if you hold down ⌘, you get a list of keyboard shortcuts currently available, interestingly organized just like the menu bar on MacOS. The totally secret stuff is all hidden behind ⌥, but actually if you hold that down while looking at menu items, they transform into their secret versions. Still not really discoverable, but there if you know where to look.
  - IggleSniggle 5y ago
    Yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about. “Hold down CMD,” how do you discover this? CMD-ALT-SPACE for Spotlight? CMD-CTL-SPACE for Emojis? 2-fingers to right click? ALT-2-finger-click for a context menu? Four/Five finger swipe gesture functions? Two fingers from the right for Notifications? The situation is even worse on iOS. Remember when it was news that you could long-press SPACE in order to relocate the text cursor? There’s a million of these little things, and if you’re in the ecosystem for awhile, you forget that you’ve learned them. They are genuinely useful and pleasant shortcuts that feel appropriate once you’ve learned them. But as far as I know, there’s no universal way to learn all these handy shortcuts. A few are configurable via System Preferences, and so you can discover them that way. Many of them are not. Particularly frustrating is that gestures change depending on your device, even stock settings! A swipe from the upper right corner of my iPhone 7 is different than a swipe from the upper corner of my iPhone 11 which is different, and while a two-finger swipe from the right on macOS gives me notifications neither iPad nor iOS do that. Why is it that two-finger tap is context menu on macOS but a two-finger tap on iOS generally does nothing, and there’s a whole different gesture of long-press (I don’t even know if ForceTap is still a thing or not). The consistency WITHIN macOS across apps is what’s great about macOS. It’s a shame it’s so hard to discover, and it’s a shame they keep changing these patterns without bothering to unify them.

IggleSniggle 5y ago

My biggest issue with macOS keyboard shortcuts and gestures (and it’s a much worse issue on iOS) is discoverability. Once you know them, though, they do work almost everywhere.

aikinai 5y ago
On MacOS, every menu item has the keyboard shortcut displayed to the right, even the ones you’ve custom assigned. On iOS this is about to get a lot better too; on iOS/iPadOS 15, if you hold down ⌘, you get a list of keyboard shortcuts currently available, interestingly organized just like the menu bar on MacOS. The totally secret stuff is all hidden behind ⌥, but actually if you hold that down while looking at menu items, they transform into their secret versions. Still not really discoverable, but there if you know where to look.
- IggleSniggle 5y ago
  Yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about. “Hold down CMD,” how do you discover this? CMD-ALT-SPACE for Spotlight? CMD-CTL-SPACE for Emojis? 2-fingers to right click? ALT-2-finger-click for a context menu? Four/Five finger swipe gesture functions? Two fingers from the right for Notifications? The situation is even worse on iOS. Remember when it was news that you could long-press SPACE in order to relocate the text cursor? There’s a million of these little things, and if you’re in the ecosystem for awhile, you forget that you’ve learned them. They are genuinely useful and pleasant shortcuts that feel appropriate once you’ve learned them. But as far as I know, there’s no universal way to learn all these handy shortcuts. A few are configurable via System Preferences, and so you can discover them that way. Many of them are not. Particularly frustrating is that gestures change depending on your device, even stock settings! A swipe from the upper right corner of my iPhone 7 is different than a swipe from the upper corner of my iPhone 11 which is different, and while a two-finger swipe from the right on macOS gives me notifications neither iPad nor iOS do that. Why is it that two-finger tap is context menu on macOS but a two-finger tap on iOS generally does nothing, and there’s a whole different gesture of long-press (I don’t even know if ForceTap is still a thing or not). The consistency WITHIN macOS across apps is what’s great about macOS. It’s a shame it’s so hard to discover, and it’s a shame they keep changing these patterns without bothering to unify them.