7

This has been bugging me for a couple years now. So in Mac OS X you can assign your own Keyboard Shortcuts ( in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts ) by typing in the exact name of the menu item to which you intend to bind the keystrokes. So what are you supposed to type if:

a) the menu is nested?

or

b) there are two menu items with the same name that do different things?

FYI: the particular reason I'm looking for this atm is because I want a quick way to show/hide the bookmark bar in Firefox (eg: instead of pressing the jelly bean in the top right of the screen). I'm using a small display so it would be convenient.

username
  • 1,428

4 Answers4

4

You can specify the shortcuts like this:

In OS X 10.8 and newer

Format -> Indentation -> Increase

In OS X 10.7:

-> Format -> Indentation -> Increase

Firefox still doesn't support custom shortcuts though. Another option would be to assign a shortcut to a script like this:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to click menu item "Pro" of menu "New Window" of menu item 1 of menu "Shell" of menu bar 1
Giacomo1968
  • 58,727
Lri
  • 42,502
  • 8
  • 126
  • 159
1

To follow up on @Lri's answer, I found that you should omit any spaces between the arrow -> and the menu item name. (At least, that's what I needed to do when one of the submenu names had spaces in it.)

For example, on Mac OS Sequoia 15.3.1, I set shortcut keys to tile the window to the left or right sides using:

  • Window->Move & Resize->Left: Ctrl+Option+Shift+Cmd+Left-arrow
  • Window->Move & Resize->Right: Ctrl+Option+Shift+Cmd+Right-arrow

Specifying the full submenu chain instead of just "Left" or "Right" avoids a conflict with the "Panel Position" submenu in Visual Studio Code.

Velvet
  • 1,739
richls
  • 11
1

There's a known bug with Firefox for Mac not obeying shortcuts. There's more discussion in a different question on SuperUser.

Community
  • 1
Doug Harris
  • 28,397
0

I'd recommend using Spark along with AppleScript, since AppleScript can control Finder.

Spark is a powerful and easy shortcuts manager. With Spark you can create Hot Keys to launch applications and documents, execute AppleScripts, command iTunes, and more...