[Hackbraten]

Note for users with a German keyboard layout: Given that the ? character is only reachable by pressing Shift, the ⇧? combination won’t work for us.

Which is why for German keyboards, Apple made ⇧⌘/ the Search shortcut.

Which also makes no sense. Because surprise, we can’t use / either without pressing Shift at the same time.

Oh, the burden of an ÄÖÜ-bearing language.

[JadeNB]

> Note for users with a German keyboard layout: Given that the ? character is only reachable by pressing Shift, the ⇧? combination won’t work for us.

Not arguing, but I think I don't understand the point. Also on a QWERTY-keyboard, ? requires ⇧. In fact, ⌘⇧/ and ⌘⇧? not only have the same effect, but are literally just different ways of describing exactly the same keypress. If you need ⇧ to access a key, but ⇧ is already included in the combination, then what's the problem?

[Hackbraten]

My point was that when ⌘(key) is already assigned to something, Apple sometimes still introduces a ⌘⇧(key) shortcut for another thing, creating a conflict because it’s the same keypress. Sometimes they don’t notice until years later.

Example: Apple chose ⌘⇧/ to focus the help search box but didn’t consider that ⌘/ already toggles line comments in many editors and IDEs.

Some app teams at Apple even double-assign ⌘(key), creating a conflict with a system-wide (localized) shortcut.

Example: On German macOS, ⌘< means Next window but a few years ago, Xcode introduced the same ⌘< shortcut for stuff like Edit Scheme, a menu command the average developer probably uses at most a few dozen times a year. Next window though is super important.

Fortunately, it’s all customizable on the user side so I’m not too angry at Apple. I just have a little weltschmerz about my language having so many umlauts, forcing keyboard designers to demote so many characters to ⇧.