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.