I hope it’s possible and something silly that I don’t know, but can you navigate dialog boxes like this with a keyboard on the Mac? It’s driving me nuts that I have to use the mouse for this.
Hopefully someone can educate us both better.
Sometimes, and I don’t know how to predict when or why, Command-Letter activates that option. In this case, see if Command-K keeps the objects.
First turn on the setting:
System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Full Keyboard Access > All controls
Then you can use the Tab key to cycle through the options, Space to choose the selected one, Enter to choose the default, and Escape to cancel.
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Thanks, but I can’t find that exact setting. Do you mean this one? I have that turned on, but that doesn’t do the job.
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Yes, that’s the one. Sorry, I’m away from my Mac rn, I found the setting name from an (outdated) article. That’s strange, though pretty sure the setting works for me.
According to a StackExchange post, for some dialogs you need to use Shift+Tab. Certainly worth a try, might be a new behaviour in Big Sur
(Also see this Brett Terpstra article on some handy keyboard shortcuts for dialogs)
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It’s not working, but thanks. I hate it how Apple does this in macOS. They should focus more on accessibility instead of talking about it. They should have a look how this works in Windows, because that part of Windows works excellent.
macos - Tab Key Not Working to Select Controls - Ask Different
Fn + Ctrl + F7 Does this help at all?
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That’s it! It works. Why is that hidden away like that? It should be the default setting, just like tab index in Safari.
Thanks!
I had this weird experience recently.
This is something I think Windows does better out of the box than Mac.
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Bonus tip for save dialogs (and Finder): CMD + up-arrow will go up one level in the folder path.
I learned this way too late after 10 years of using Macs.
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I was a bit too quick. I can now tab between buttons like Cancel and Delete, but when you press Return it only removes the dialog box and nothing else. Who designed this?
Maybe it got neglected or lost in the move away from Cocoa and AppKit to new development frameworks like Catalyst and Swift and Electron etc etc
Does pressing return select the default, which may be cancel?
Try pressing space to press the selected button.
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That one works. Thanks!
But how complicated can you make something simple?
Maybe it got neglected or lost in the move away from Cocoa and AppKit to new development frameworks like Catalyst and Swift and Electron etc etc
This can’t be an excuse. This is works this stupid in Finder and Apple should finally put its money where its mouth is when it comes to accessibility.