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Useful Keyboard-Shortcuts for Mac OS-X

Switch between desktops, screenshots, jump into the Spotlight search or jump to beginning of a line. With the matching keyboard using shortcuts in Mac OS X can be much faster than using the mouse or the touchpad.

In Mac OS X 10.9 Apple Mavericks attracts great importance to an extensive gesture control with the Multi-Touch trackpad or Magic Mouse. But with hands on the keyboard anyway mainly at work, what could be more obvious than to use hotkeys as often as possible?  The handle to the trackpad or mouse only disturbs the flow of work and is in many cases also slower than a simple key combination.

Who often works for example with many desktops does not want to misss the key combination “ Ctrl + arrow key (left / right)  ” . The change is more convenient than using a multi-finger swipe gesture. And why using  the mouse cursor on the little magnifying glass icon in the upper right status bar of Mac OS X when the Spotlight search can be opened much faster with Command + Spacebar ?
On Apple- keyboards there are besides the known Ctrl, Shift key (Shift), Caps Lock in addition a Fn (in MacBooks) , the Option key (Alt) and Command-Key (Cmd). When a key combination with the function keys F1 to F12 has to be pressed, the Fn key has to be pressed on the MacBook in addition, because the F1 to F12 keys are primarily occupied with special features such as screen brightness and volume.

The following lists do not claim to be exhaustive :
Hotkeys on system startup
key combination
impact
alt
View all bootable volumes
shift
Safe boot (safe Mode)
left-shift
Prevent automatic logon
C
boot from a bootable medium run (eg USB stick)
T
Start in FireWire target disk mode
N
Start from NetBoot server
X
Force boot of Mac OS X to force (if there are other boot volumes )
D
Perform hardware test
cmd+R
Start Restore
cmd+V
Start logging mode
cmd+S
Start single user mode
cmd+alt+P+R
Reset NVRAM/Parameter RAM
Hold Eject, -F12, -Mouse- or -Trackpad-Button
Eject removable media
Hotkeys for shutdown / hibernate
Key combination
Impact
On/Off- switch
System off or put into hibernation
Press and hold Power button
Force Power-off
cmd+ctrl+on/off-switch
Force reboot
Ctrl+eject
Show dialog box for reboot / suspend / off
cmd+alt+eject
Put system to sleep
cmd+Ctrl+eject
End all programs and restart Mac OS X (after query to back up open documents)
cmd+alt+Ctrl+eject
End all programs and shutdown/ switch off Mac OS X (after query to back up open documents)
shift+Ctrl+eject
All displays put to sleep

 

 

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