for macOS Sequoia
Intro
Have you ever thought, "I wish there was a keyboard shortcut for that"? This guide will teach you how to create a keyboard shortcut for any option in the menu bar, under any menu, including the Apple menu.
What can be turned into a keyboard shortcut?
You can create a keyboard shortcut for all options in the menu bar, as long as you have the exact title of the option. You can interact with a menu option to see how it is spelled.
For options that have an ellipsis (…), use Option+Semicolon. Using three periods (...) will not work. Using the Option+Semicolon shortcuts inputs a single ellipsis character.
Creating a keyboard shortcut
To access the keyboard shortcuts window, do the following:
- Open System Settings.
- Select Keyboard from the sidebar.
- Find the Keyboard Shortcuts button.
- An easy way to access it is to find the Text Input heading (VO+Command+H once), and navigate to the left to find Keyboard Shortcuts.
- In the keyboard shortcuts window, select "Application shortcuts" from the sidebar.
The table contains a list of applications to select. You can press VO+\ to expand each app to see its keyboard shortcuts. There is also an Add button.
Pressing the Add button is how you will create a shortcut.
You can select the application you wish for the keyboard shortcut to be applied to.
You then must enter the exact menu title as shown in the menu bar.
It should be noted that you cannot paste the clipboard contents into the text field. This will try to create a shortcut with Command+V.
Once you have entered the menu title, navigate to the keyboard shortcut text field. Once you interact with the text field, press the keys that you want assigned to the keyboard shortcut.
It should be noted that macOS will not let you know if a key conflicts with another keyboard shortcut you have created.
Practical use cases
Creating keyboard shortcuts for menu items can be particularly useful if there is a menu item you frequently use.
For example, I use the proofreading feature of writing tools a lot. I have Control+Shift+R set as the keyboard shortcut. This causes the text to immediately get proofread.
In the menu title text field, I typed exactly "Proofread". I also have other keyboard shortcuts for other writing tools, such as Control+Shift+G to send the text to ChatGPT using the compose tool.
Other examples include:
- Rewrite, Control+Shift+W
- Summarize, Control+Shift+S
- Make list, Control+Shift+L
- Make key points, Control+Shift+K
Other use cases could include creating a shortcut to bring you to software update settings. This is possible because of the View menu.
Even if shortcuts exist for menu options, you can input a new shortcut, and it will be changed.
Conclusion
Creating keyboard shortcuts is easy, and it can enhance workflows, allowing you to get things done more quickly and easily. Any menu item you want to have a keyboard shortcut can have a keyboard shortcut, making this best for apps that don't assign their own keyboard shortcuts, or apps that have complicated shortcuts that you might not be able to press, such as holding down several modifiers, like Command+Control+Option+Shift+an additional key.
I hope you have found this guide useful. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
Comments
Limitations
Unfortunately, some keys cannot be used to assign actions to.
For example, when using the full-size Magic Keyboard with Keypad, it's not possible to assign shortcuts to the keys on the block between the regular keyboard and the keypad (e.g. home, end, page up/down).
Yesterday, I tried to assign Control-Page down to the go to next tab menu entry in Safari, which didn't work. The Mac only output the typical alert tone and no keyboard shortcut was entered in the corresponding text field.
apple intelligence shortcuts
hello.
I have just discovered this guide to creating shortcuts but I do have one question.
you mentioned in the guide that you created a shortcut to send any text that you write to chat gpt for proofreading/rewriting but you didn't specify the exact steps you took in order for that process to happen.
my question is, how do you create shortcuts for the in-built apple intelligence features of macOS? do you have to adjust anything under where it asks you to specify which application you'd like the shortcut to be applied to?
If somebody could please get back to me about this, that would be greatly appreciated as I believe this has great potential, especially for university students like myself
Creating Apple Intelligence keyboard shortcuts
Like I mentioned in the guide, you need the exact menu title of the apple intelligence feature you want to use in this case.
Where it asks you to choose an application, select all applications if you wanted to work in all applications, otherwise choose an app you want to use the keyboard shortcut in.
You do not need to specify whether the option is in the file or edit menu, but you need to type it exactly as shown in the menu.
You can interact with the title of a menu to see how to spell it, then type it exactly as shown.
As mentioned in the guide, command V won’t paste text into the keyboard shortcut dialogue. It will instead try to assign the keyboard shortcut for the current action to command V.
Hope this better clarifies things.
re: apple intelligence shortcuts
hi. I understand how to create keyboard shortcuts but what i'm asking is, how do I know if a key combination conflicts with another application? for example, i tried to assign command+g to the compose feature for apple intelligence but instead of launching chat gpt, it brought up the find and replace dialogue in microsoft word. is their a way to know this type of thing? or is it simply based on trial and error?
If anybody has any ideas surrounding this, I would be most grateful.
many thanks
Natalija
Keyboard shortcuts conflicts
The only way to know if a keyboard shortcut is available is to either go through the menu of each app, and see if menu items have keyboard shortcuts next to them, and just not use one of those. Alternatively, you could try the trial and error method. Either will work. There is no direct way to see That a certain keyboard shortcut is assigned to something with in an app.