macOS is packed with some very useful features, often hidden behind obscure keyboard shortcuts. This article lists my favourites of these.

Screen Shot Combinations

Still using the Print Screen button? Have you installed custom screenshot software that has full access to your screen, introducing a major security flaw?

Instead use the built-in screenshot functionality in macOS.

  • Command + Shift + 3: screenshot of the entire screen.
  • Command + Shift + 4: allows you to select an area with the cursor. Press Space instead to capture a specific window on the screen.
  • Command + Shift + 5: full-featured screenshot UI with screen recording capability.

Screenshots are saved to your desktop with a timestamp in the name, like Screenshot 2024-04-30 at 10.00.32 AM.png.

Finer Volume Control

When adjusting the volume with the keyboard, macOS’ discrete volume levels can be very frustrating, especially at the lower end of the spectrum. For finer control, people often use volume slider in Control Centre for more granular levels.

Instead you can press Option + Shift + Volume Up (or Down) to get finer control.

Thanks to this post on Reddit for pointing this one out.

Many people know that pressing the spacebar in Finder will preview the current selection. If you select multiple files, pressing CMD + Return opens a gallery view.

Spotlight

Pressing Command + Space shows the spotlight search bar from anywhere. My dock is nearly empty at this point.

Command + , (comma) usually opens the current app’s settings window.

Similarly Command + Shift + ? will usually bring up the help search bar for the active application, although some apps will interfere with this combination.

Alt Tab Secrets

Whilst alt-tabbing between windows, press the down arrow to view all windows for the selected app, or press q to quit the app.

Swapping Windows inside an App

Most people know about Command + Tab to switch apps, but there’s also Command + ` (backtick) for switching between windows within an app.

Emoji Viewer

To easily add emojis to editable areas, press Command + Control + Space to show the emoji selection window.

Lock the Screen

Command + Control + q locks the screen immediately. I also like to setup a Hot Corner for that.

Dangerous but occasionally useful: Command + Option + Shift + Q will immediately log out the current user without a prompt.

Move Instead of Copy

Hold Command to move a file between drives instead of copying it.

Reorder Menu Items

Command + Click and drag menu items to reorder them.

Text Substitutions

If you regulary type complex emotes or phrases, the text substitution functionality can save you time.

Some examples:

  • shrug –> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • tm –> ™
  • dune –> ⊃∪∩⪽

To navigate straight to this System Settings window, search for text replacements in Spotlight. See Apple’s support document for text replacement for more information.

Here are some other general keyboard features that you may find interesting.