The Complete Beginners Guide to Mac OS X El Capitan (2015)

Appendix A: Keyboard Shortcuts

General Shortcuts

Command-X – Cuts or removes selected text or item and copies it to the clipboard.

Command-C – Copies the selected text or item to the clipboard.

Command-V – Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the document, app, or finder.

Command-Z – Undoes the previous command.

Command- Shift-Z – Redoes the previous undo.

Command-A – Selects all text or items in the running program.

Command-F – Opens the Find window to find documents or other items.

Command-G – Finds the next occurrence of a previously found item (i.e. Find Again).

Command-H – Hides the current running program or front window (Note: this will not work if you have a program running in full screen).

Command-Option-H – Hides all the open apps and windows.

Command-M – Minimizes the currently open window or app (Note: this will not work if you have a program running in full screen).

Command-Option-M – Minimizes all open apps and windows.

Command-N – Opens a new document or window.

Command-O – Opens an item (for instance if you are in Word or Pages and you want to open a previously saved document).

Command-P – Print the current website or document.

Command-S – Save the current document.

Command-W – Close the front window or app

Command-Option-W – Close all open apps and windows.

Command-Q – Quit an app.

Command-Option-Esc – Force quit a program that is not responding.

Command-Space Bar – Brings up Spotlight to quickly find documents, emails, and apps.

Command-Tab – Switch to the next open app (Note: if you don’t let go of Command and continue hitting the Tab button, you can continue going to the next app.

Command-Shift-3 – Take a screenshot of your entire screen.

Command-, – Opens the Preference menu (if applicable) for the current app.

Document Shortcuts

The following shortcuts are applicable to supported document software like Word, PowerPoint, Pages, Excel, OpenOffice, etc.

Command-B – Bold or un-bold the selected text.

Command-I – Italicize or un-italics selected text.

Command-U – Underline or remove underline to selected text.