[behnamoh]

macOS keyboard shortcuts situation is weird. it shines where Windows is lacking, and falls behind where Windows is ahead.

Example:

I still don't know how to install an app (*.pkg) just using keyboard on macOS. On Windows, it's simply "press tab or alt and see what happens". Another example: on Windows I can press Alt and see a letter underlined in the menu to let me know what keyboard shortcut activates it, but on macOS I have to do Cmd-Shift-/ and search for the command.

On the other hand, on macOS I get to create custom keyboard shortcuts in the Settings app while Windows, afaik, doesn't have this feature.

I can make a new folder on macOS and put the selected files in it automatically if I do Ctrl-Cmd-N, but if I want to "show package contents" of an app in the Applications, I definitely need a mouse! On Windows machines there's often a right-click button which is really useful

[egypturnash]

on Windows I can press Alt and see a letter underlined in the menu to let me know what keyboard shortcut activates it

Have you not noticed that every MacOS menu item that has a keyboard shortcut has the entire shortcut listed on the right side of the menu? This goes back all the way to System 1 in 1984: https://web.archive.org/web/20140512112637/http://www3.nd.ed...

It's somewhat more obvious when you're using a keyboard that actually has all the same symbols on the meta keys; Apple likes to drop those sometimes and it's really not helpful for someone who hasn't learnt the cryptic glyphs. The ancient Magic Keyboard on my desk only sports a ⌘ on the Command key, and lacks ⇧ on the shifts, ^ on control, and ⌥ on the alts.

You can even navigate the menus entirely by keyboard, if you turn on "Full Keyboard Access" in the Accessibility prefs. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/navigate-your-mac-u...

but if I want to "show package contents" of an app in the Applications, I definitely need a mouse!

With Full Keyboard Access on you can hit tab-m to bring up an app's right-click menu and navigate to it. FKA has a lot of tab-something shortcuts.

[tom_]

Menu items on Windows can have 2 shortcuts - a keyboard shortcut like the macOS equivalent, that can activate the item when the menu is closed, and an access key, that can be used to activate it when the menu has keyboard focus. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...

(The access key concept applies to many other types of control. Anything with a text label can have one, pretty much.)

The shortcut is indicated towards at the side of the menu bar, like macOS. The access key is indicated by an underlined letter. For example, in Firefox, the File > Save Page As... menu item has a shortcut key (Ctrl+S), and an access key (A). The A in As is underlined to indicate the access key, and there's a right-aligned Ctrl+S in that row of the menu bar to indicate the shortcut.

[CalRobert]

For peak usability, Windows 3.1 kept the mnemonics underlined _all the time_. It's been downhill since then. Though I'm looking at the menu bar on Firefox on Ubuntu right now and at least the mnemonics are underlined now as I type, even without hitting "alt".

[emchammer]

Oh, man, I had forgotten about having the menu keyboard shortcuts underlined all the time. Sometimes you could even tell that whoever had a sense of humor in choosing the mnemonics. I don't even know how to open the macOS menu bar without my keyboard now.

After doing an Internet search for it, I have learned that it is Fn-Control-F2, after enabling Full Keyboard Access in Accessibility. How could it get this bad? (Apple's other accessibility features are amazing.)

[486sx33]

I found screenshots on Mac OS very counter intuitive… why does it need to be 3 keys and one of which has the number 3 or 4 it? Why not 7 or 9 ? Or 1 or 5 ? Crazy

[kps]

Back on the original Macintosh, which was a single-tasking system, there were special keyboard shortcuts that bypassed the current application and invoked system functions. Command-Shift-1 ejected a floppy from drive 1, …2 from drive 2, and …3 being the next available slot became the screenshot operation.

[wtallis]

> I still don't know how to install an app (*.pkg) just using keyboard on macOS. On Windows, it's simply "press tab or alt and see what happens".

You may be looking for the "Keyboard navigation" preference that lets you tab between controls like on Windows.

[boxed]

I believe they're talking about menu access.

[wtallis]

Menus aren't part of the GUI flow for installing a .pkg; you just open it from the Finder and click through the dialog boxes, or set the aforementioned option and tab to the right buttons.

[mattl]

Now I think of it, how do you install a pkg from the CLI?

[ireflect]

installer -pkg InstallMe.pkg

Check out `man installer` for details.

[saagarjha]

installer(8)?