I am new to Mac and have been surprised from the absence of keyboard shortcuts for opening applications. According to the instruction (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH3957) :” You can’t define keyboard shortcuts for general purpose tasks such as opening an application or switching between applications”.
In Windows assigning keyboard shortcuts for opening applications is very easy. What is the way in Mac OS?
I think you may want to ask this question on Ask Different instead of stack overflow.
As a preliminary answer, though, a quote from the Use global keyboard shortcuts Help text provided by Apple concerning system keyboard shortcuts:
Note: You can create keyboard shortcuts only for existing menu commands. You cannot *define keyboard shortcuts* for general purpose tasks such as opening an app or switching between apps.
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For some reason the "ctrl+right" / "ctrl+left" keybindings does not work for me in visual studio code. I took a screenshot of my keybindings.json and the Keyboard Shortcuts Troubleshooting:
I've tried the same mapping without the "when" condition or different value but it didn't seem to do anything.
If I change the keybinding to other keybinding like "ctrl+shift+right" or "cmd+right" then keybinding activates. The output here suggests that the keybinding is not found by VS code.
Is there something special about Ctrl+Right/Ctrl+Left key combo?
I am using macOS Big Sur. I didn't touch any default system keybinding. I googled around for mac OS system keybinding but nothing came up under the "ctrl+right"/"ctrl+left" combo.
Before I switch over to VS code I was using Webstorm, which had this keybinding for many years. I never had any problem with it.
I'd appreciate any help or info.
Ctrl+Left/Right maps to desktop switching in macOS by default. So you need to go to Keyboard > Shortcuts in the System Preferences and remove Ctrl+Left/Right from Mission control
See
Use Mission Control on your Mac
How can I make ctrl+right/left arrow stop changing Desktops in Lion?
I have recently moved from Windows 10 to MacOS Big Sur. On Windows, I used AutoHotkey for system-wide automatic text replacement. For example:
(alpha) would turn into α
(beta) would turn into β
Is it possible to do a similar thing using Automator on Mac? I'm not interested in app-specific settings, as I would like this to work in all apps. Not being familiar with the OS, I am struggling to figure it out, and Google/Apple Documentation have been no help!
Thanks
Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text and add your substitutions, as show in the image further below.
You can get to System Preferences from the Apple menu, far left of the menu bar, or from Spotlight pressing the commandspace bar keyboard shortcut and start typing System Preferences, or from the Dock clicking on the System Preferences icon, as shown below.
What is the nature of shortcuts of the second kind, how are they created and how do they actually work? How does a developer create a shortcut of this kind for his application?
I see that in Tools -> Options -> Keyboard you can set Keyboard shortcuts for a large number of tasks. I tried searching for "Close" and these are the results, amongst a few others:
File.Close
File.CloseAllButThis
File.CloseProject
File.CloseSolution
If I set File.Close to be Ctrl+W (Honestly, why doesn't Microsoft innately support such a universal shortcut is beyond me) it mostly works, however if I have both the code-behind and the Designer view open for a form, it closes both tabs. Should I be setting a different command, or am I stuck with this? It's a small inconvenience, but it really irritates me.
I don't know if it's the same in VS2010, but in VS2012 this command is called "Window.CloseDocumentWindow" and it is mapped to Ctrl+F4 by default, to mirror Alt+F4 for closing application-level windows.
I believe the Ctrl+W shortcut was first brought to Microsoft Windows by Adobe Photoshop, a carry-over from Apple OS X, where Adobe seems to have remapped all of the ⌘ command+* shortcuts to Ctrl+*. On OS X, ⌘ command+W only closes windows, but the application stays resident. One uses ⌘ command+Q to quit applications, instead. As the window is the application in Windows, Ctrl+W is kind of a misnomer, but it has gotten more popular for some applications like web browsers to support it.
Given the market dominance of MS Windows over Apple OS X for desktop operating systems, it would seem that the F4-style shortcuts are "more universal" than the W/Q ones.
Use CTRL+F4 to close current window, to close all window of visual studio and shut down use - ALT+F4 .
Go to Tools -> Options -> Keyboard Apply "visual studio code" additional keyboard mapping scheme
Can someone please remind me how do I toggle between open projects using a keyboard shortcut? I briefly knew how to do this but it has evaporated from my brain and Google is no help.
I don't know what the shortcut is for switching between open projects, but in OS X in general you can use Command + ` (backtick) to cycle among windows of an application.