Which keys does an app leave free? Picking your own shortcuts
To find the keys an app leaves free, check three places: the app’s menus, where most of its shortcuts are listed beside their commands; the app’s own shortcut list or editor, if it has one; and the macOS list in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts. A combination that appears in none of them, and does nothing when you try it, is very likely free. For a shortcut that has to work in every app, look at three or four modifiers held together, such as Control-Option-Command with a letter, where very few apps put anything.
That sounds like a lot of checking for one shortcut, but skipping it is why a freshly picked key so often does nothing, or quietly breaks something else. The steps below make it quick.
An app shortcut and a global shortcut need different kinds of free
There are two kinds of shortcut you might be choosing:
- A shortcut inside one app, such as a key for a menu command you use all day in Pages or Photoshop. It only has to be free in that app.
- A global shortcut, such as the key that opens a launcher, starts a recording or shows an overlay. It has to be free everywhere, because it is listened for whichever app is in front.
The second kind is harder. When a global shortcut and an app’s own shortcut are the same, the global one usually wins, so the app loses that key everywhere. Pick Shift-Command-N for something global, for example, and that key no longer makes a new folder in the Finder.
Before you look at any lists, rule out the keys that type. Plain letters and Shift with a letter type text. Option with a letter types a special character on most layouts: on a US keyboard Option-G types ©, Option-S types ß, and Option-E starts an accent. On many European layouts, characters you need every day, such as @ and square brackets, are typed with Option. A global shortcut on Option and a letter takes that character away from you in every text field. Type special characters on a Mac with the Option key shows what each Option key types.
Single letters with no modifier are fine as shortcuts only inside apps where you are not typing, which is why video editors and design tools use them for tools.
Where an app lists its shortcuts
The menus. Most Mac apps show a shortcut beside every menu command that has one. Opening each menu and reading down the right-hand side is slow but complete for what the menus contain. To find one command quickly, press Shift-Command-/ (⇧⌘/) to open the Help menu, type part of the command’s name, and macOS points to it in the menu, with its shortcut if it has one.
The app’s own list or editor. Apps with a lot of keyboard use often have their own:
- Premiere Pro’s Keyboard Shortcuts editor (Option-Command-K) draws the keyboard and shows which keys have commands.
- VS Code’s Keyboard Shortcuts editor (Command-K, then Command-S) can search by the keys you press as well as by name.
- Slack shows its list with Command-/.
Shortcuts that appear nowhere. Some apps handle keys that are in no menu: single-key tools, keys that only work in one panel, and the text editing keys that macOS gives most text fields, such as Control-A and Control-E to jump to the start and end of a line, and Control-K to delete to the end of it. A Control-letter shortcut in an app where you write may already be doing something you have not noticed. Text editing shortcuts that work in almost every Mac app lists them.
The keys macOS keeps for itself
macOS reserves a set of shortcuts in every app. Avoid these, or turn off the ones you never use first.
| Shortcut | What macOS uses it for |
|---|---|
| ⌘Space | Spotlight |
| ⌥⌘Space | Finder search window |
| ⌃Space, ⌃⌥Space | Switching input sources |
| ⌃⌘Space | Emoji & Symbols |
| ⌘Tab, ⌘` | Switching apps, and windows of the same app |
| ⇧⌘3, ⇧⌘4, ⇧⌘5 | Screenshots and screen recording |
| ⌃↑, ⌃↓ | Mission Control and app windows |
| ⌃←, ⌃→ | Moving between Spaces |
| ⌥⌘D | Showing and hiding the Dock |
| ⌃⌘Q | Lock Screen |
| ⌥⌘Esc | Force Quit |
| ⇧⌘/ | The Help menu |
Then there are the shortcuts almost every app shares in its own menus: Command-Q, Command-W, Command-H, Option-Command-H, Command-M, Command-Comma for settings, and the Edit menu’s Command-Z, X, C, V and A. Treat them as taken everywhere.
To see the full macOS list, open System Settings, choose Keyboard, and click Keyboard Shortcuts. The sidebar groups them: Mission Control, Screenshots, Spotlight, Input Sources and more. Each has a checkbox, so a system shortcut you never use can be switched off, which frees the key for your own.
Combinations that are usually free
Some corners of the keyboard are quiet in almost every app:
- Control-Option-Command with a letter. Three modifiers at once is awkward enough that apps rarely use it, which makes it a good home for global shortcuts. Typebar uses it for its own defaults: Control-Option-Command-K shows or hides the overlay, and Control-Option-Command-T turns Click to Type on or off.
- All four modifiers, as a Hyper key. Control, Option, Shift and Command together are close to empty everywhere, but too much to press by hand. A Hyper key folds them into one key; Hyper key shortcuts: what to put on them once you have one covers what to do with it.
- F13 to F19. The Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad has them, and few apps use them.
- Control-Option with a letter. Fewer apps use it than Command combinations, but check the app first, and skip it if you use VoiceOver, which uses Control-Option for its own commands.
The crowded corners are Command with a letter, which most apps fill, Shift-Command with a letter, which is busy in many, and Control with an arrow key, which macOS uses for Mission Control and Spaces.
Check a candidate before you commit
Once you have a combination in mind, test it in four steps:
- Look in the app. Hold the modifiers and see what is already there. Typebar does this on screen: hold a modifier, such as Command, for a moment and the keys relabel with what they do in the app in front, read from its menus and from hand-made packs for apps whose menus leave a lot out. Its Cheatsheet List can also show which keys an app leaves free. For most apps without a pack, it relies on what the menus say, and an app can handle keys that no menu shows, so still do step 3.
- Look in System Settings. Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, as above, for anything macOS has on it.
- Try it. Press the combination in the apps you use most, ideally in a new, empty document so nothing important changes if it turns out to be taken. If nothing happens anywhere, it is free.
- Assign it. For a menu command, use App Shortcuts in the same Keyboard Shortcuts window, for one app or for all of them; Add or change a keyboard shortcut for any menu item on a Mac walks through it. For anything else, use the app’s own shortcut settings.
If a shortcut that worked stops working later, a common cause is a newly installed app that took the same combination as a global shortcut. Check the settings of whatever you installed most recently.
Typebar is $9 once, and you can try it free for 24 hours.
Questions
Is there one place on a Mac that lists every shortcut in use?
No. macOS lists its own in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, each app lists most of its own in its menus, and global shortcuts set by other apps live in each of those apps’ settings.
Can I free up a key macOS uses?
Many of them. In System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, uncheck the shortcut, or double-click its keys and press a different combination.
Why does the App Shortcut I added not work?
Usually the menu title does not match exactly, or the combination is already taken. The title has to match the menu item character for character, including any … at the end.