Get 18% more keys for free with this one crazy trick

You probably only have 78 keys on your keyboard.1 So why do you never use 12 of them?

These keys, of course, are the F-keys F1 through F12. By default, macOS uses them for the glyphs printed thereon. But tell me the last time you pressed any of these:

  • F3 for Mission Control.
  • F4 for Spotlight.
  • F5 for whatever that microphone does.
  • F6 for Sleep.2
  • F7–F9 for Music control.

I'll grant that you might use F1/F2 for brightness and F10–F12 for volume control. But still, how often?

Let your apps use them

I'm writing an app. Apps work really well with shortcut keys. We all have 12 perfectly great keys right there, begging to be used – and we never do.

'Of course', you'll say. 'The user can press the Fn key to access the F-keys'. And, right, they can do that. But a fraction of people know that this is possible. So they never, ever will.

I implore you, then, to change this setting. Go to Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts… > Function Keys. Turn on Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.

And there you go. Previously you had 66 usable keys. Now you have 78.

Footnotes

  1. US keyboard on a modern Mac laptop. ↩

  2. TIL that there's a built-in Sleep shortcut! I've created my own via a Raycast shortcut for years now.3 😭 ↩

  3. For 'sleep' I use Control-Option-L. I use Control-Option for my own global shortcuts because not much else does. L because the shortcut, which triggers Raycast's system action Sleep Displays, has the effect of Locking my laptop. I may have inherited this from Windows, where Win-L does the same. ↩