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I'm right handed, but I am switching the mouse to my left hand to give my right a rest. On PC keyboards ctrl+ins and ctrl+del work as copy and paste, is there an equivalent on the Mac?

Update: I thought I was asking for key switching solutions, but that's not quite what I put in the title, and the suggestions to use the existing keys has made me think. The particular problem I'm having involves the holding of the mouse making my wrist slightly bent, and the regular action of raising my hand to move the mouse in a limited area has begun to make me feel it in the wrist, a warning sign.

Regular rests can't undo over 20 years of bending, so I shall stick with the hand change. But keeping the keys unchanged might force me to leave my hand near the keyboard and not on the mouse, which might reduce the time spent bent. I shall see how it goes.

I've chosen the answer closest to my chosen action. @Arjen, your comment was closer but I can't accept it.

Thanks all

Giacomo1968
  • 58,727
David
  • 400

3 Answers3

3

You could use PTH Pasteboard Pro and set up any hot key you want in its preference pane. I tested this by setting Control-Delete to paste.

Mark Thalman
  • 989
2

I'm a Windows and Mac user, and I'm left-handed. I rarely use my mouse and I use my left hand for copy and paste, irrespective of the OS or which hand I'm using to control the mouse. It took too many braincells to remember two ways to do the same thing on the keyboard.

As for resting, you should be doing that every 20 minutes. It's just common sense. Stand up, walk around, focus on things further away than your screen, etc.

0

I've manage to do this after a long research using Karabiner remapper.

I started looking for how to get my Mac to detect the ins keystroke, and based on this answer on reddit, I got to Karabiner remapper.

Once your Karabiner is all set and working (check if you allow every permission it asks, and if you are configuring the right device on Devices tab), you are going to add two "Complex Modifications", one to map command+ins to command+c, and the other to map shift+ins to command+v.

command+ins to command+c:

 {
    "description": "command+ins to command+c",
    "manipulators": [
        {
            "from": {
                "key_code": "insert",
                "modifiers": {
                    "mandatory": [
                        "right_control"
                    ],
                    "optional": [
                        "any"
                    ]
                }
            },
            "to": [
                {
                    "key_code": "c",
                    "modifiers": [
                        "right_control"
                    ]
                }
            ],
            "type": "basic"
        }
    ]
}

shift+ins to command+v:

{
    "description": "shift+ins to command+v",
    "manipulators": [
        {
            "from": {
                "key_code": "insert",
                "modifiers": {
                    "mandatory": [
                        "right_shift"
                    ],
                    "optional": [
                        "any"
                    ]
                }
            },
            "to": [
                {
                    "key_code": "v",
                    "modifiers": [
                        "right_control"
                    ]
                }
            ],
            "type": "basic"
        }
    ]
}

Important: use Karabiner-EventViewer (installed together with Karabiner) to check the correct key you want to map on the script. In my case, I used to swap command for control on system settings. But even so, Karabiner is saying that I'm pressing the control key, so I used the control key on the script

dama-dev
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