Navigating Text Using the Keyboard on macOS

Nov 6, 2016

A few months ago, Merlin Mann tweeted a link to the Apple Support document on Mac keyboard shortcuts. There's a ton of great tricks in there, but what I want to focus on are the ones related to editing text documents.

I've selected just the shortcuts I find most useful, and reposted them below. If you work with text at all on a Mac — code, prose, spreadsheets, whatever — these will seriously step up your game.

Note: I've used glyphs for the shortcut keys so as to better fit them in the table. If you're unfamiliar with any of the symbols, I've provided a key at the bottom of the post.

Shortcut	Description
`⌘` + `↑/↓`	Move cursor to beginning or end of document.
`⌘` + `←/→`	Move cursor to beginning or end of current line.
`⌥` + `←/→`	Move cursor to beginning or end of previous word.
`⌥` + `↑/↓`	Move cursor to beginning or end of current paragraph.¹
`⇧` + `↑/↓`	Extend selection to line above or below.
`⇧` + `←/→`	Extend selection one character to left or right.
`⇧` + `⌘` + `↑/↓`	Extend selection from cursor to beginning or end of document.
`⇧` + `⌘` + `←/→`	Extend selection from cursor to beginning or end of current line.
`⇧` + `⌥` + `↑/↓`	Extend selection to beginning or end of current paragraph.
`⇧` + `⌥` + `←/→`	Extend selection to beginning or end of current word.
`⌥` + `⌫`	Delete the word to the left of the cursor.
`Fn` + `⌫`	Forward Delete on keyboards that don't have a Forward Delete (⌦) key.
`⌃` + `K`	Delete the text between the cursor and the end of the line or paragraph.
`Fn` + `↑/↓`	Scroll up or down one page.
`Fn` + `←/→`	Scroll to the beginning or end of a document.

Key

Symbol	Key
`⌘`	Command / cmd
`⌥`	Option / opt
`⌃`	Control / ctrl
`⇧`	Shift
`fn`	Function / Fn
`⌫`	Delete / Backspace
`←` `↑` `↓` `→`	Arrow Keys

Note: This does not work in all applications. ↩︎

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