Discovered a New Keyboard Trick Today

[Jim Koepke]

For many years one of my observations is many online sites are Microsoft/PC centric.

When replying to a post, one can use Alt+s to send the post. Asking Macintosh folks and PC users what the equivalent keystrokes on a Macintosh would work brought back nothing.

This evening, by accident, my fingers hit the Control+Option+s and the message was sent.

Just worked on this post.

jtk

[Curt Harms]

This looks like a wealth of tip & tricks for Mac users. I'm not one but don't live in the Microsoft world either.

https://www.danrodney.com/mac/

[Marshall Harrison]

Long time (20+ years) PC user until 2014 when I switched to Macs. I will never go back.

Just tested the Ctrl+Option+S and it didn't work for me.

[Roger Feeley]

More power to you, Marshall. I’m still married to Windows for work. In the evening, I have an iPad for what I call “casual computing.”

[Kevin Beitz]

I like to assign hot keys to my notes and major programs.
Example... ctrl/alt/7 brings up my paint program.
The way you do it is to right click on an icon and go to
properties got to short cut keys and type in the keys
you want. If I'm on the internet and i need my notes I
just push "ctrl Alt and the letter L" for look it up...

[Peter Christensen]

Only one I know is Option + 0 gives me the degree symbol . Can’t do it with this phone though. :(

[Marshall Harrison]

More power to you, Marshall. I’m still married to Windows for work. In the evening, I have an iPad for what I call “casual computing.”

Most of my development work was still done in Windows. I just ran a Windows VM on the Mac. I setup the VM with the tools I needed like Visual Studio then cloned it and worked in the clone. The source code was on the Macs file system and backed up on GitHub. So if things went wonkers with Windows (always will) then I just blew away the VM and cloned the base install again.

I too used my Ipad until I had to reset it then it reverted to an old IOS and nothing will install, Got a Fire tablet for Christmas to use as my eReader.

[Jim Koepke]

Only one I know is Option + 0 gives me the degree symbol . Can’t do it with this phone though. :(

There should be a keyboard viewer somewhere on your menu:

405723

Pressing the shift, option or shift+option key will change the key faces to the character made by the key combination.

Comes in handy if you correspond internationally or need to use characters like £, ¢, Ω or Ø.

jtk

[Peter Christensen]

Jim I found and put the Character Viewer up but can't figure out how to keystroke them onto the page but I can drag and drop them so that is good enough. √ ∜ ∯ ®

Thanks 👋

[Jim Koepke]

Jim I found and put the Character Viewer up but can't figure out how to keystroke them onto the page but I can drag and drop them so that is good enough. √ ∜ ∯ ®

Thanks ��

To keystroke them into the page, press and hold the option key while printing the character key. Same with a shift option character. Hold the shift and the option key then press the character key.

For diacritical marks, such as é hold the option key while pressing the e key. Then press the e key and é will appear. For í, or á, press the option+e, then the i, a or any other letter that can use that particular mark.

It is also possible to enter these character using the keyboard viewer.

Try it in TextEdit or on a note pad just for fun and exercise.

jtk

[John K Jordan]

...press and hold the option key while...
It is also possible to enter these character using the keyboard viewer.


For the other side of the fence Windows provides the Character Map, copy and paste. À

405777

[Jim Koepke]

For the other side of the fence Windows provides the Character Map, copy and paste. À

405777

It seems there has been some interoperability protocol arranged over the years. At one time the 'special' characters would not translate across platforms and browsers. Now to the best of my knowledge they seem to work.

Though there still seems to be a few hiccups with FireFox at times.

For me, learning a few extra keystrokes flows better than a copy/paste or looking up a character. Someone explained to me a long time ago that looking them up and then using the keystrokes was a better way to remember the most often used characters instead of looking and clicking. A Windows using friend memorized the unicode for the characters he used most. My memory is a bit fuzzy on how it was done, maybe hitting the alt key and then typing in a number sequence.

jtk

[lowell holmes]

I am testing the shortcut.:)
It worked. I am sometimes slow on the uptake.