Accessing menus in OS X

Sun, 10 June 2007

One thing many switchers to Mac hate is not being able to access the menu via keyboard shortcuts. For example, in Windows Alt-F gets you to File menu item, Alt-T to Tools, Alt-V to View, and then you select from there.

There is no such thing on Mac, but there is something else, and not many new Mac users know about it. It’s Control-F2.

Go ahead and press it, then watch your Apple menu.

menu.jpg

It gets highlighted and you can do the rest with your arrow keys. And it works in all applications, so just select the application you want with your mouse, or Command-Tab on your keyboard, then press Control-F2 and you’re in business.

Stumble it!

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Category Posted in New to Mac, Tips

11 Responses to “Accessing menus in OS X”

  1. Justin Allard said: Mon, 11 June 2007 at 00:29

    Great tip. I never knew how to do that on my Mac.

  2. Alexander said: Mon, 11 June 2007 at 01:09

    GREAT!
    It’s so helpful.

    Sometimes we do not look for shortcuts … but it’s so fast!

  3. CrimsonCrow said: Mon, 11 June 2007 at 04:28

    I thought it might be important for some of your readers to know about setting the correct System Preferences to make this tip work…

    You must go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences. Then select Keyboard & Mouse. Select the Keyboard tab. From here be sure that the “Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features” check box is checked.

    To use the F-keys to control hardware features such as Volume or Brightness use the fn (Function) key instead of the ctrl (Control) key.

    If the “Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features” check box is not checked in the Keyboard & Mouse System preference, this tip will not work as described.

    Happy Mac-ing!

    PS I’ve come to love Silver Mac’s new face lift. It scrolls like butter!

  4. Yohannes Wijaya said: Mon, 11 June 2007 at 18:28

    and Ctrl-F3 select the dock. btw, there is an app called deja menu that lets you access the menus by means of keyboard shortcuts you define.

  5. Nixta said: Wed, 13 June 2007 at 05:05

    Perfect. Fantastic. I was just wondering about that on my third convert day.

    Note also that you can type the name of the menu item you want to go to to get to that quicker than just arrow keys. Makes little difference in practice, but vaguely useful.

  6. Candace said: Wed, 13 June 2007 at 05:40

    Hey I may just be pressing the wrong keys but all that shows up is the brightness controller on my screen….

    I am using 10.4.9. Don’t really know if that has anything to do with it!

    Thanks!

  7. Jacques said: Fri, 15 June 2007 at 15:46

    This trick is great. On my Mac, a PowerPC G4 with MacOs 10.4.9,
    1) it works when :
    a) pressing only Control-F2 (2 keys) with the check box “Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features” checked.
    b) pressing Control-fn-F2 (3 keys) with the check box “Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features” not checked.
    2) it doesn’t works when :
    a) pressing only Control-F2 (2 keys) with the check box “Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features” not checked.
    b) pressing Control-fn-F2 (3 keys) with the check box “Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features” checked.

    So checking this checking box is antagonist with pressing the fn key. Confirmation :
    Pressing Control-F1 makes the use of Control-F2 unavaliable, pressing it again restores it, and the fn keys acts in the same way.

    Question : except for Control-F3 who knows the actions of Control-F4, Control-F5, and the others Control-Fs ?

  8. CrimsonCrow said: Sun, 24 June 2007 at 20:47

    Candace said: Hey I may just be pressing the wrong keys but all that shows up is the brightness controller on my screen….

    Candace, check out either my June 11th post or Jacques’ June 15th post. Either of these will help you…

  9. Cameron Boehmer said: Tue, 7 August 2007 at 17:53

    Forget Ctrl+F2. Forget the dock. Forget your mouse (most of the time).

    Quicksilver gives users much faster access (think typing partial keywords rather than arrowing through menus) to the menu items of *all* active programs.

    So I’m in iViewMedia Pro and I want to sort all of my photos by capture date. I’ve bound a trigger to invoke Quicksilver and select the menu items for the current application, so all I do is hit opt+space, type ‘ca’ (that’s all it needs to isolate ‘capture date’) and hit enter. Done. No mouse, no arrows, no time wasted.

    If you like time-saving keyboard shortcuts and haven’t heard of quicksilver, I highly recommend you check it out. It has changed the way I use my mac.

    http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

  10. rich said: Fri, 21 December 2007 at 00:33

    The problem for quickness is that on OSX you cannot navigate menus with single unique letters, as you can in Window, and windows gives one screen hints on how to do it as you go. I’d be endlessly grateful if anyone could point me to a way of using a Mac like you can use Windows in this way. In my opinion it is a big problem with OSX.

  11. lex said: Sat, 12 January 2008 at 05:37

    Actually, after you initiate Control+F2 you can navigate menus using the first letter of each menu item [If it isn't the first letter, then that could mean it has already been assigned to another menu item]. The clues are not there, but, the navigation is possible. You just have to get used to it as it is a bit different on OSX than it is in Windows. Depending what app you’re in, Cntl+F2, then type the first letter of each word. You can then hit down arrow down, then see what letters will activate each menu item. Often times, it is either the Command letter, in other instances where there is no command letter, it could be the first letter you see for each word. As it highlights what you want, you then hit return. But, most Mac users will memorize most command keys that get the app to do specific things that a person will receptively use. Which is not unlike what Windows can do as well, only no command key and very limited use of the Windows key.

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