I recently had a switcher friend ask me about selecting and moving around in text in OS X. It occurred to me that there are probably a lot of new Mac users abusing their arrows keys as a result of not knowing how to select text so here is a quick review.
Moving by the letter …
Arrow Keys
Selecting one letter at a time …
Shift + Arrow Keys
Moving one word at a time …
Option + Arrow Keys (right and left)
Selecting one word at a time …
Shift + Option + Arrow Keys (right and left)
Moving one paragraph at a time …
Option + Arrow Keys (up and down)
Selecting one paragraph at a time …
Shift + Option + Arrow Keys (up and down)
Move to Top or Bottom …
Command + Arrow (up and down)
Select to Top or Bottom …
Shift + Command + Arrow (up and down)
Move to Front/End of Line …
Command + Arrow (right and left)
Select to Front/End of Line …
Shift + Command + Arrow (right and left)
Did I miss anything?
Thanks, I knew a couple of these but not all of them. I’d been looking around recently for a full list.
Yeah a biggy for me was the # key which is alt 3 in OS x.
Some emacs shortcuts will work in some apps too.
I typically use ctrl-d (forward delete), -a (go to beginning of line) -e (go to end of line), -k (kill), and -y (yank).