Editing text with Cocoa text shortcuts

2017-03-07

In any user interface element that accepts text, there are a set of text editing keyboard shortcuts that work in almost every application. Most are not listed in menus or only in certain applications.

Here’s a great link that documents most of the shortcuts. Note that the document is missing a few newer ones and there are a few that have changed since it was published, but this is the best resource I’ve found.

Cocoa Text System

Here’s a subset of them that I find particularly useful.

Keyboard shortcut	Action
⌥ ⌫	Delete the previous word (if you make a typing mistake and it spans multiple words, this is a really quick way to delete what you just typed)
⌥⇡ or ⌥⇣	Move cursor to beginning or end of paragraph
⌘⇡ or ⌘⇣	Move cursor to beginning or end of document
⇧⇡ or ⇧⇣	Select upwards/downwards one line
⌥⇧⇡ or ⌥⇧⇣	Select upwards/downwards one paragraph
⌘⇧⇡ or ⌘⇧⇣	Select upwards/downwards to beginning/end of document
⌃⇡ or ⌃⇣	Scroll one page up or down (most keyboards don't have dedicated keys for this anymore)
⌃A	Move to beginning of line (super useful in Terminal)
⌃E	Move to end of line