Teaching keyboard shortcuts to a class from a Mac
To teach keyboard shortcuts to a class from a Mac, do three things together: say each shortcut out loud, show it on the projected screen as you press it, and give students time to press it on their own Macs before you move on. macOS already helps with part of this, since menus print shortcuts beside their commands, but macOS has no setting that shows the class the keys you press. A keyboard overlay on the projected screen fills that gap, and a one-page handout of the shortcuts you covered gives students something to keep.
Why shortcuts are hard to teach
A shortcut happens in your hands, and the class is looking at the screen. Press Command-Shift-N in Finder and a new folder appears; students see the folder, not the keys. Some of them then try it from memory, press Command-N, and get a new Finder window instead.
Other things work against you too:
- Split attention. Students look from your screen to theirs and back. Every time they look down to find a key, they miss what you do next.
- Unfamiliar modifiers. Students who grew up on Windows reach for Control, and the ⌘, ⌥ and ⌃ symbols in menus mean nothing until someone explains them. Mac keyboard symbols explained is a good page to share before the first lesson.
- Different keyboards. On a MacBook, fn sits at the bottom left; on a Magic Keyboard with a number pad, it is in the group of keys above the arrows instead. ISO keyboards, common in Europe, add a key beside the left Shift and move a few others.
Say it, show it, let them press it
A routine that works for most shortcuts:
- Show the long way first. Open the menu, point at the command, and point out the shortcut printed beside it. Students learn where to look it up again.
- Say the keys in the same order every time. Modifiers first, then the key: “Command, Shift, N.” Use the names printed on Mac keys: Command, Option, Control, Shift, Return, Delete.
- Press it slowly, with the keys on screen. The class sees the keys and the result in the same moment.
- Let them press it. Wait until most of the room has done it. Walk round if you can.
- Use it again later. A shortcut used once is gone by next week. Build it into the next exercise.
Show students Help menu search as well. Command-Shift-/ (Command-?) opens the Help menu with a search field in almost every Mac app. Type part of a command’s name and point at a result: macOS opens the menu that holds the command and points to it, with its shortcut, if it has one, printed beside it as usual. It is how they will find shortcuts once you are not there. Find a Mac app’s keyboard shortcuts without searching online has more ways.
For a first lesson, a short set covers a lot of everyday work:
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| ⌘C, ⌘V | Copy, Paste |
| ⌘Z, ⇧⌘Z | Undo, Redo (in most apps) |
| ⌘Tab | Switch to another app |
| ⌘Space | Open Spotlight |
| ⌘W, ⌘Q | Close the window, Quit the app |
| ⇧⌘N | New folder, in Finder |
| Space | Quick Look the selected file, in Finder |
| ⇧⌘4 | Screenshot of an area you select |
| ⌥⌘Esc | Open Force Quit, for an app that has stopped responding |
Put the keys on the projected screen
Saying “Command, Shift, N” covers the students who are listening. Showing it covers the ones who looked away for a second, and the ones who learn by seeing.
Typebar puts a keyboard on screen where every key you press lights up, and a keystroke pill that names each shortcut with the name it has in the app’s own menus, such as “⇧⌘4 Screenshot Selection” or “⌘K Insert Link”. Because the names come from the menus, they match what students find when they open the same menu on their own Mac.
A few details matter in a classroom:
- Match the class’s keyboards. The board can be a MacBook keyboard, a Magic Keyboard with or without a number pad, or a tenkeyless one, in ANSI, ISO or JIS. Pick what most students have, so the lit keys are where their fingers will look.
- Match their layout. The keys follow your input source, so a class on QWERTZ or AZERTY sees the letters where their own keyboards have them.
- Repeats count up. Press Command-Z three times and the pill shows one chip with ×3, so nobody wonders whether you pressed it once.
- Clicks show too. Each kind of click gets its own ripple on screen, and with Show clicks in the pill on, a Command-click reads as ⌘ Click and a right click as Right Click.
- Readable from the back. Make the keyboard and pill large, and choose a theme that stands out against the app you teach. Typebar follows the macOS Increase contrast setting, in System Settings > Accessibility > Display, so turning that on makes every legend easy to read.
Typebar’s ready-made Learning profile is a sensible place to start, and a profile keeps the whole setup (look, mode, sizes and places, pill, mouse and sounds), so your teaching setup does not disturb your everyday one.
Show a whole app’s shortcuts with a held key
Single shortcuts are only half of it. Students also need a sense of what an app can do from the keyboard.
In Typebar, hold a modifier (⌘, ⌥, ⌃ or ⇧) for a moment, and the keys on the board relabel with what they do in the app in front. Hold Command in the app you are teaching and the class gets a map of what Command does with each key there, read from that app’s own menus. Hold Option to see the characters each key types, which is useful in a language class: students can see where accents and symbols live before they try Option-E for an acute accent on a US keyboard. You can pin a sheet with a double tap, so it stays up while you talk through it.
Some apps rely on shortcuts that no menu lists, such as the single-key tools in Figma or Photoshop. Typebar has 20 hand-made packs for apps like these, including Figma, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Excel, Logic Pro and Xcode; hold fn to see their single-key tools.
When a student asks “how do I…?”, the Cheatsheet List helps. It is a searchable list of an app’s shortcuts: search for the command, pick it, and its keys light up on the board for the whole class.
Hand out the shortcuts you covered
Students forget, so give them something to keep. macOS has no way to export an app’s shortcuts, so most teachers type up a list by hand, as in the table above.
With Typebar, you can start the handout from the cheatsheet itself. Rename any shortcut whose menu name will confuse beginners, add any you teach that the menus leave out, and export the sheet as a PNG or PDF to print or share. Look over the export before you print it; if the class only needs the few shortcuts covered so far, a short typed list like the table above may suit a first lesson better. Make a printable cheat sheet of any Mac app’s shortcuts goes through the steps.
Teaching the same class remotely
On a video call the problem is the same, only worse: you cannot walk round to check, and students see your screen at whatever size their window happens to be. Typebar’s keyboard and pill appear in screen sharing like any other window, so share your whole screen rather than one app’s window, or the overlay is left out. Fields macOS marks as secure, such as password fields, never show what you type, and Hide letters turns letters into dots while shortcuts still show, for the moments you type something the class should not see.
Typebar is $9 once for up to 5 Macs on one license key, and the first 24 hours are free.
Questions
What is the best way to teach keyboard shortcuts?
Show the menu first, say the keys in the same order every time, show them on screen as you press them, let students press along, and use each shortcut again in a later exercise.
How can my class see which keys I am pressing?
Run a keyboard overlay on the Mac you project from. It lights each key and names each shortcut on the shared screen, so students can see it without seeing your hands.
Can I print a list of an app’s keyboard shortcuts on a Mac?
macOS cannot export one. You can copy shortcuts from the menus into a document by hand, or export a cheatsheet from an app such as Typebar as a PNG or PDF.