Are you a keyboard shortcut fan? These shortcuts might just add a little something to your repertoire. In this article, we offer up some tips for controlling the Finder with a few lesser known keystrokes.

Shortcuts To Success

I’ve been using Mac OS since the mid 1990’s and all along the way there have been some great time saving finds. Things like the modern SHIFT+COMMAND+5 to bring up the various screen and audio capture options, spring-loaded folders –a personal favourite but not wholly a keyboard shortcut-, COMMAND+TAB for cycling through open applications, OPTION+Clicking the ‘Go’ menu to view the user Library folder, holding OPTION while dragging an item to make a copy of the item; these simple things can really help optimize the user experience. 

In this article, I’ll point out additional shortcuts that can really speed things up for you, if you didn’t already know them. In all cases, the + isn’t part of the shortcut.

Applications and Utilities

Getting there is half the battle. Instead of clicking an icon or burrowing through folders, try SHIFT+COMMAND+A for the Applications folder and SHIFT+COMMAND+U for the Utilities folder. Of course, you can also SHIFT+COMMAND+D to get back to the Desktop at any point in time.

Get Moving

We all know COMMAND+C for Copy and COMMAND+V for Paste to create a copy of a file/folder elsewhere on your Mac. The Mac OS’s Unix base actually allows for a Move command which will take a file or folder and move it to the destination of your choice, removing it from its original directory. Next time you want to move something, COMMAND+C to copy the item, then COMMAND+OPTION+V. You’ll see your item appear in your destination and disappear from the original location. 

Scale Those Desktop Icons

This one is a new trick in my arsenal. Want to make your Finder icons smaller or larger, all at one go? In your Desktop, Click COMMAND+-(dash, located under F11) for smaller and COMMAND+= (located under F12) to make the icons larger.

Resize Windows Like A Pro

This one came from my fellow contributor, Steve DeMott. When you’re resizing a window, hold OPTION down to resize from all corners at the same time. Very cool!

Pump Up The Volume

Some applications like Pro Tools force us to switch off the default mappings for the F keys and two of them are for volume control, ironically. There is a way around this. In a full sized keyboard (non-laptop) under F13 is the ‘fn’ key. Holding this key down will restore the original function to the F keys, until released. So fn+F11 or F12 will once again allow us to turn the Mac’s volume up and down. The F10 key will act like a mute switch.

Now, things get a little interesting. With fn+F11+OPTION, the Sound Preferences Pane in the System Preferences will open! This also works if you use F12 instead of F11. Of course if you didn’t bypass the original F key mapping, you won’t need the fn key for this. 

Want finer adjustments on the volume controls? Hold down SHIFT+OPTION while you tap F11 or F12 (you might need the fn key too if you’ve removed the default F key functions for the sake of your DAW or another program). 

Black Screen

Ever want to turn off all your screens for playback? Julian Rodgers told me he likes to do this and offered up this handy trick. To temporarily switch off your Mac's display hit Ctrl+Shift+Eject. Press any key or move or click the mouse to bring it back.

Quick Shutdown

Shut Down using Ctrl+Opt+CMD+Eject. It turns out a few of our contributors use this one. Though this key command doesn’t work on the Login window, it’s a handy way to shutdown your Mac without running the gauntlet of pop-ups asking if you’re really serious about it.

Tell Us More!

Every time I feel like I want to speed up my workflow in some new way, I go looking for a key command to make it happen. There are many, many more shortcuts out there to make life fun for the user. If you want to share one, please do, in the comments section. Apple does have a sweet little online list, here. It’s worth reading if you want to start speeding!