Useful Keyboard Shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts is a proven way to increase your speed while navigating around in Mac OS X. I don’t know how many of you have seen Brian sprinting through the OS using a countless number of shortcuts. Part of Brian’s speed stems from the amount of experience and comfort he has in navigating the OS, but undoubtedly part of his speed is due to his knowledge of keyboard shortcuts. While not all of the keyboard shortcuts are totally useful all of the time, many are useful for many tasks such as opening and closing applications and navigating between open applications.

Here is a useful list of keyboard shortcuts that also has a key that helps show what keys correspond to certain commonly used symbols. Like I said before, not all of these shortcuts will be applicable to everyday OS X use however, I would like to highlight a few that I use most commonly.

The main shortcut I use is Command(Apple)+Space Bar (In this case the “+” between the two keys means that they are to be pressed simultaneously). What this key does is open up the spotlight feature in the upper right hand of the screen. From here you can search for any files you might be seeking such as am important word document. However, what I mostly use it for is launching applications, to do this simply type the name of the application into the spotlight and press Enter when it highlights the correct application which will usually be the top hit if spelled correctly.

Another shortcut I use to navigate applications is Command+Q. What this does is quit out of the application. I find this method a lot faster than using the Apple menu or Dock to quit out of applications. Another shortcut that might be in the same category as this is Command+H. What this does is “Hide” the current open application. The application will still be open but it will be hidden and can be called upon from its icon in the dock.

These are the main general use shortcuts that I use hundreds of times everyday and obviously there are far more that I didn’t highlight. If you have some useful shortcuts that you find yourself using leave it in a comment, I am always ready to have my eyes opened to shortcuts that will make my life easier in the long run and I’m sure others might find it useful as well.

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