how to mark text on a mac?

By Igna Triay, 10 May, 2016

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi all. Is there a way to mark text on a mac to copy it to the clipboard? Instead of having to select the text, is there a way to mark the starting place where you want to start copying something, and then mark the place where you want to stop, and then just press copy? Thanks for any help.

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By KE7ZUM on Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 23:37

There isn't, but there is a script you can write to do this.

Here are the instructions.

Open a TextEdit document and paste in the following without the quotes:

"{
"^y" = "yankAndSelect:"; //control-y
"^\@" = "setMark:"; //control-@
"^w" = "deleteToMark:"; //control-w
"^x" = { //control-x control-x
"^x" = "selectToMark:";
};
"^ " = "setMark:"; //control-space
"~f" = "moveWordForward:"; //option-f
"~b" = "moveWordBackward:"; //option-b
}"

Save the document as:
DefaultKeyBinding.dict

You’ll need to change the extension to .dict manually.

Go to your user library by going to the Go menu in Finder and using the VO keys to navigate down to Library.
Create a folder Called KeyBindings and put the .dict document into it.

From now on, you should be able to select text in any text editing application by pressing Ctrl-Space to mark the beginning of the selection, and Ctrl-x-x to mark the end of the selection. Everything in between will be selected, including page breaks.

I'm not sure if that last set of instructions was suposed to be cotnrol-x or control-x then x.

By Igna Triay on Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 23:37

I am not sure if I am doing it correctly. Do I have to remove all the quotation marks, or just the quotes that are at the beginning and end?

By Igna Triay on Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 23:37

So I just copy and paste The block of code without removing The quotes? If that is the case, then that was where I messed up. Lol.