5 very simple keyboard commands that will significantly improve your computer efficiency (Mac)

5 min readDec 13, 2021

I always noticed my coworkers, when screen-sharing on video calls, were always so quick do things. By things I mean like changing windows, switching lines, duplicating stuff, and so on without ever touching their mouse/trackpad. I was always so impressed and wondered how they did that, so I obviously started googling.

In my research I found tons of keyboard commands that were so easy to remember and ended up making me really efficient. So I wanted to share my top 5 that were truly game changers. These are the 5 that I would even teach my parents. It’s so simple to learn, and using it is so much easier than the traditional reaching for your mouse, pointing and clicking a few times to get where you wanna go. So it’s a no-brainer really…

I urge you to practice these as you read the article. You can’t break anything I promise.

Here we go with the first one, the almighty…

Command + Tab

Shortcut: cmd + tab

This is one of the first shortcuts that I learned and it’s awesome.

All you gotta do is press and hold cmd, then press tab (but keep holding cmd).

An application switcher will pop up, this shows you all the apps that are currently open on your Mac.

From here keep tapping tab until the application you want to go to is highlighted, then let go. Your computer will instantly switch to that application.

Btw, most keyboard shortcuts will start with cmd, hence why they are also called keyboard commands. It’s the keys located on the left side and right side of the space bar. Yes that means, there’s 2 of them. But they do the same thing, it’s for convenience.

It’s an easy to remember location because the space bar is the biggest key on your keyboard. So without looking down, with your thumbs, feel for your left command key and right command key. Practice. Make a mental note of their space and how it feels to reach for those keys. Press them, it won’t do anything unless linked with another key. So keep pressing them until it feels slightly less awkward. Keyboard shortcuts are all about muscle memory. It will eventually be automatic for you.

The way I remember this particular command is that the application switcher looks like tabs. Tabs, of my computer. Like chrome tabs. So `cmd`, I interpret as “go to” and `tab` as, well, “tabs”.

So “go to tabs” = command + tab.

Command + Tilde

Shortcut: cmd + ~

Use this to switch between windows of an application.

I use this most when using SourceTree because I’m constantly switching repositories, and each repository is its own window.

Discovering this shortcut gave me so much joy. PLUS, it’s easy to remember because it’s just above the tab key which if you’re used to switching apps with cmd+ tab, then this will be and easy one for you.

Another way I remember this shortcut, is I imagine the ~ as a sort of magazine, if you were viewing it from the side, laid out on a table.

Switching windows in an application, can kind of be like flipping through pages of a magazine. So if I want to flip through the open windows of an application, I remember the squiggly line as looking like a magazine and in my head “go to magazine” converts to cmd as “go to” and squiggly line as “pages in a magazine”, and there we go.

Ok…I’m not sure if that was too helpful. It works for me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On to the next!

Command + Space

Shortcut: cmd + space

This one comes super in handy when you realize after doing cmd + tab , the app you want to go to is not actually open.

Press cmd + space to open up “Spotlight search”.

Spotlight search is an input box where you can type pretty much anything.

You can type in the name of an application you’d like to open, then use the up and down arrows to select what you want. Hitting enter will launch the selected thing.

You can even use it as your calculator. Type in some math like “5x5” or “5*5” to get 25. This is probably what I use it for the most.

The things you can do with Spotlight search are endless, so I’m gonna leave it at that for now. You can google some more, but knowing even these few things will already help a lot.

When you want to get out of Spotlight Search, just press the escape key (esc) located at the very top left of your keyboard. Or if you have one of those Macs that don’t have an escape key because the touchbar took up that space (sigh, thanks for fixing it though Apple), then just cmd + space again.