How to Create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts for Any App on Your Mac
Almost every Mac app has at least one action that takes one click (or three clicks) too much to complete – no one wants to go through four different menus or use the search bar to find the action they want, especially if that’s what you are. use often. When you find an action in an application that you know you’ll use over and over again, but which is tedious to navigate to, you can create a shortcut key for it in macOS.
How to customize your app’s keyboard shortcuts
Let’s take Safari Extensions as an example, shall we? Without a shortcut, the only way to view it is to click Safari and then Safari Extensions in the menu bar. To get there faster, add a custom keyboard shortcut by clicking the Apple logo in the upper left corner of your screen and going to System Preferences . (While you’re here, you can also change System Preferences to make future searches easier.)
Go to the Keyboard section and select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab at the top of the window. In the left pane, click Application Shortcuts, then tap the + icon and click the drop-down menu next to Applications . You can choose Safari from this list, as that’s what we’re aiming for right now.
Next to the menu title, type Safari Extensions… . (Remember to add three dots after the extensions, because you need to enter the name of the menu item exactly as it appears.) Now click on the form next to Shortcut Keys and hold down the keys you want to assign. In our case, let’s go with Command + E. Click Add to complete the process.
The next time you use Safari, press Command + E to directly open the Safari extensions menu.
You can get creative with this feature and set your own keyboard shortcuts for any application you like. I use it in my writing app – Ulysses – where the Add Target feature didn’t have a keyboard shortcut. Assigning this option to Command + G sped up my workflow a lot, as I no longer have to click four times to access this option.
Create custom keyboard shortcuts for all apps on Mac
Be careful when choosing the correct app from the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in Keyboard Preferences on Mac – under Application, you can also select All Apps to set a global keyboard shortcut. However, this can change the keyboard shortcuts for several applications, so make sure you don’t overwrite a useful shortcut before proceeding. (For this reason, it’s usually best to enable custom shortcuts for individual apps rather than all apps.)
How to remove custom keyboard shortcuts on Mac
If you find an unwanted keyboard shortcut, go to System Preferences> Keyboard> Shortcuts> Application Shortcuts, select the one you want to remove in the right pane, then click the minus sign ( – ) to remove it.