Many Mac users are familiar with a handful of keyboard shortcuts, like ⌘N for a new window or ⌘W to close a window. But did you know that there are plenty more?
If you’re familiar with the text-editor Emacs (and even if you’re not) you may find these shortcuts really handy:
- Control-A: Beginning of line (like Home)
- Control-D: Forward delete (like the Forward Delete button, ⌦)
- Control-E: End of line (like End)
- Control-K: Kill/remove text between cursor and the end of the line
- Control-U: Remove/delete current line
- Control-V: Page down
For a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts, check out this Support article from Apple: Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts
It’s also good to know that you can find keyboard shortcuts for most of your common activities if you look in the menu of an application. The relevant keyboard shortcuts are listed right next to the menu item. For example, in this Firefox menu, I can see that to make a New Tab, all I need to do is hit ⌘T, and to close the current tab, ⌘W.
If you’re ever unsure what the symbols mean in a keyboard shortcut diagram, here’s a dictionary:
- Control = ⌃
- Command = ⌘
- Delete = ⌫
- Eject = ⏏
- Escape = ⎋
- Forward Delete = ⌦
- Option/Alt = ⌥
- Return = ⏎
- Shift = ⇧
[Emacs-like shortcuts via Lifehacker]
