MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS

Obscure Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

• John

Any Mac keyboard shortcut that someone hasn’t heard of before may seem obscure to them, but some keyboard shortcuts circulate far more in user circles than others. Recently, I went looking for those elusive, useful keyboard shortcuts. That’s not something I would necessarily have done in the past, because I can only recall so many keyboard shortcuts, but, of course, I was looking for ideas for filling out my Stream Deck and using Shortcuts via BetterTouchTool’s ability to trigger keyboard shortcuts. Here is a selection of my discoveries.

Define Word (‌⌘⌃D). You may know that ⌘⌥D hides your Mac’s dock, but did you know that its close cousin ⌘⌃D defines whatever the word under your cursor using the system Dictionary app? I love the Mac’s Dictionary app. It’s lightweight, compact, and works contextually. Long-pressing a word using the Magic Trackpad is how I’ve often accessed a contextual summary of a word’s definition, synonyms, and other data, but this shortcut is handy whenever my hands are glued to the keyboard writing away.