OS X Browser Shortcut Cheat Sheet
The browser is arguably the most used application on anyone’s computer and with the onslaught of hundreds (if not thousands) of new web applications, the time spent in said browsers will only increase.
Back in college in my various graphic design classes, one thing that I really took away from all of that was how the use of keyboard shortcuts (or hot keys) really did boost productivity and reduce significantly the amount of time needed to complete tasks over a period of time.
One hindrance to my picking up keyboard shortcuts quickly was lack of documentation…or rather lack of easily accessible documentation. So in this post I’m aiming to provide you some easy-access tools for becoming a browser power-user. Download the tool that fits your setup best…hopefully it will help you in some way!
Enjoy!
The Goods
I’ve broken down the keyboard shortcuts by browser and then by download type. If there’s a format that would work better for you, just request it in the comments and I’ll see what I can whip up.
Safari & Firefox
PDF – 80KB
PNG – 52KB
Bookmarklet (drag to your bookmarks bar)
Completely Biased on January 23rd, 2007 at 1:45 pm
They both suck. Where’s OmniWeb?
Josh Pigford on January 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 pm
“Where’s OmniWeb?”
It’s back there with the other .03% of people who us it. :)
David Gossett on January 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
The *one* shortcut from the WinXP world that I sorely, sorely miss on my Mac is Alt-D, which shifts the cursor into the address bar, so that you can then type a web address. (IE, you don’t have to click into the address bar to type an address; you just go Alt-D, and then start typing it.) Do you (or any commenters) know how to do this in either Firefox-Mac or Safari? I’d be infinitely obliged…
Vedmok on January 23rd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
>The *one* shortcut from the WinXP world that I sorely, sorely miss on my Mac is
>Alt-D, which shifts the cursor into the address bar…
Command+L always worked for me, in most browsers. It’s right there in the File menu as well.
Lance Willett on January 23rd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Josh, good start! I’d add ⌘K to the “Select search field” line… Command-K selects the search field in Firefox. You can also hold down the Command key in that seach field and use the down/up arrows to change search engines.
Josh Pigford on January 23rd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
@Lance Willet: Thanks for the tip. I’ve updated the sheet to include ⌘K.
josue salazar on January 23rd, 2007 at 4:33 pm
David, as Vedmok said, Command+L works on most browsers on the Mac to highlight the address bar.
What I’d like to know though, is if there’s a way to highlight the search bar (other than Command+L+Tab).
josue salazar on January 23rd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Duh, I didn’t read the Lance’s comment.
Todd on January 23rd, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Command+Option+f will highlight the search bar in Safari.
Kyle Korleski on January 23rd, 2007 at 11:33 pm
NICE! Thank you ^_^
Marco on January 24th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I’ve installed (and purchased) KeyCue. No more need for cheat sheets, since pressing the cmd key for a configurable time will show the keyboard shortcuts that are available for the active application. Works with every app. and no I’m not affiliated. :)
The Salzar on January 24th, 2007 at 10:25 am
I got this thing called KDE, lets me set my shortcuts, and assign them on a per window basis. ahh ctrl + : to go to firefox
Angela on January 24th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Thanks for this. In Firefox with several tabs open I use command + tab # to get me to another page fast. I wish that was possible in Safari.
Frode Hegland on January 24th, 2007 at 10:48 am
These are very good and you can get even more shortcut goodness on Firefox if you install Hyperwords.
Select any text and issue keyboard combos to launch commands.
Try a very simplified version without installing anything at http://www.easierweb.info or install Hyperwords for free from http://www.gethyperwords.com And yes, I work for the company.
You can think of it as the ** context menu on steroids with keyboard access ** :-)
tom on January 24th, 2007 at 10:53 am
what about hard refreshes to bypass the cache?
Hendrik on January 24th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
@Marco: Thanks for that pointer. What a great program! I am amazed that I have never seen that in any of those countless “top 10 useful OSX programs” lists.
themacthinker on January 24th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Pretty good stuff. Thanks for putting it together in a nice little pdf.
toby on January 24th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
i was hoping to learn something from these. doesn’t everyone know all these?
hard refresh is ctrl+f5
themacthinker on January 24th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I just tested your shortcuts and some of them are either outdated or incorrect. for instance: in order to open a link in a new tab all you need to press is COMMAND+CLICK ….
You might wanna revise your shortcut list.
Josh Pigford on January 24th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
@themacthinker: Eh…what? Command+click works just fine. They’re all tested and work fine for me.
Barrett on January 26th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Thanks for the ⌘L, that is usefule. But you forgot ⌘G which finds the next occurance of the word you typed using ⌘F.
Pierre Lourens on January 27th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Pressing slash ( / ) in Firefox also brings up the find text.
dotjay on April 25th, 2007 at 4:01 am
On a Mac, Ctrl+F5 is not a hard refresh as it is on Windows. Logic dictates that it should be Cmd+F5 and the Firefox documentation on keyboard shortcuts shows that Cmd+F5 should bypass the cache, but that loads VoiceOver for me in OS-X. Instead, I use Cmd+R for refresh and Cmd+Shift+R for hard refresh.
new user on July 17th, 2007 at 8:47 am
is there a keyboard shortcut for browser back button?
Zach on December 2nd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Heh, Cmd+L is the magic I’ve been looking for since switching to Mac 3 weeks ago, a bit frustrating running the browser in VMWare fusion though. :-)
Thanks all for the great info.
dannyObanny on December 17th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Nielson/NetRatings has issued a study showing that the top 10 social networking sites saw traffic grow 47% over the last year, with MySpace seeing the biggest growth (367% increase) and MSN Spaces (286%) seeing the biggest growth. Hosted blogging systems were included in the study.
One thing to note about those numbers is that while Classmates had one of the lowest positive growth rates at 10%, they spend loads on advertising while MySpace, Youtube, and Facebook haven’t spent a penny.
If I recall correctly, a couple years ago Classmates.com was one of the 10 largest spenders on online advertising.
There are plenty of new social networking sites poping up but what get’s me why can’t myspace there instant messenger working. $580 mill and can’t afford to fix instant messenger BAD myspace.
There are so many better ones how about http://cubiclelife.net for example has all the features of myspace plus quizzes, polls, webchat with audio and video oh and hey they have instant messenger. You have a long way to go myspace.
http://seekingalpha.com/wp-content/seekingalpha/images/socialnetapr06.jpg
Shiori on January 26th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
These are great but no one knows how to reset after (option+mouse click). In the process of downlaoding a movie from a paysite and instead of holding (ctrl+mouse) i hit (option+mouse click) and now all the media i try to download turns into “php.txt.” files anyone know why that is?
ps. using mac book pro
Valentijn on April 10th, 2008 at 11:35 am
TIP: this will get the url, send it to a window loading delicious api, set the window nicely to a dialog kind of size, tags etc etc. After logged in it will remember the account settings ofcourse…
This is the best option for me as I can try to make it crossplatform. As Firefox 3 has not as much extensions at the moment… yet as well as other beta browsers etc etc
Ciao!
Applescript to save url bookmark to Delicious from Safari !
tell application “Safari”
set theurl to (get URL of document 1)
end tell
tell application “Safari”
activate
open location “http://del.icio.us/YOUR_ACCOUNT_NAME?noui=yes&jump=close&url=” & theurl
set bounds of window 1 to {200, 200, 900, 550}
end tell
Sunny on August 3rd, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Ny one here help me know the shortcut for “switching between the tabs”….
Thanks