I’m a huge believer in keyboard shortcuts: anything that makes the time I spend in front of the computer easier and more enjoyable is vital. I’ve covered popular browser keyboard shortcuts in the past, together with typographic shortcuts; in this article, I’ll focus on shortcuts that are exclusive to Mac OS X. Depending on the task at hand, these shortcuts can save minutes to hours every day, eliminating petty annoyances.
| Keyboard combination | Description |
|---|---|
| ⌘ + Opt + Shift + V | Paste without formatting. By default, copied text will retain its font, color and size when it is pasted. If you’re taking notes or references – copying text from a web page into Microsoft Word, for example – you usually don’t want that. This special command will retain hyperlinks together with bold and italics in text, but otherwise paste text without inherited formatting rules. |
| Shift + highvolume Shift + lowvolume | Increase and decrease the volume without the “quack-click” sound cue. |
| Opt + Shift + highvolume Opt + Shift + lowvolume | Adjust volume up / down in quarter increments |
| Opt + Shift + Opt + Shift + | Adjust monitor brightness up / down in quarter increments |
| ⌘ + Space | Spotlight search |
| ⌘ + Option + Space | Spotlight search in a new Finder window |
| ⌘ + Option + H | Hide all windows in other applications: great for concentrating and cleaning up your workspace |
| ⌘ + Control + F | Toggle fullscreen mode (also great for concentration) |
| ⌘ + Delete | Send item to trash |
| ⌘ + Opt + Shift + Q | Log out |