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Comment by blauditore | Hacker News Reader

I had quite the opposite experience. It was a few years ago when I tried to switch from Windows/Linux, but the lack of keyboard support in certian situations drove me nuts; I even remember one system popup notification with a single "Ok" button which I couldn't get rid of by keyboard (Enter, Spacebar, Esc... - no effect). Meanwhile, in many Linux DEs, especially the combination of keyboard and mouse allows for super quick window management (resizing and moving while holding a modifier like Alt, which AFAIK is impossible natively under Windows or MacOS).

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- You can get rid of those annoying pop-up notifications by doing Cmd-Period (Cmd+.) It will work when even Esc / Cmd+W won't! It's a hidden shortcut not many know about, and not on the linked Apple shortcuts page.

- You can make all those system dialogs navigable (to use tab and spacebar to execute buttons) by enabling: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls".

It can take years to learn everything that macOS secretly offers, but no more than it took me to be at that level on Windows, or any Linux DE. I agree though, multiple Linux DEs seem superior to both macOS and Windows with their out-of-the-box hotkey ability. For everything else, there's Mastercard, uh, AutoKey.

The Command + . was sort of a general "stop" shortcut on Classic MacOS. Most apps with some sort of cancelable operation used it to stop the operation which often caused the modal to be dismissed.

Since old MacOS had cooperative multitasking if an app started some task that never offered control back to the OS it monopolized the system. Many (but not all) apps used the Command + . shortcut to cancel those sorts of tasks.

And for those who'd like to use a keyboard shortcut to toggle keyboard control of system dialogs, there's ctrl + F7.

Although I see this is no longer displayed in the system preferences area you mention, but just tested and it still works on 10.15.6. Wonder if this is the first step in that keyboard shortcut's removal due to the touch bar.

This is also true of a pop up that has options like yes, no, cancel. In other OS's, this would be done with an arrow key, but in MacOS, this is done via mouse, I think.

I suspect there will be a comment that tells me how to do this with a keyboard?

Not sure if I've changed any crazy configuration options, but I can use tab to move a blue outline around buttons on popups, pressing space to press the button outlined. Enter always interacts with the default button, indicated with a blue fill.

> Meanwhile, in many Linux DEs, especially the combination of keyboard and mouse allows for super quick window management (resizing and moving while holding a modifier like Alt, which AFAIK is impossible natively under Windows or MacOS).

not a linux user: why do you need to hold a modifier to resize a window?

It allows you to resize the window from anywhere without having to 'grab' the corner or side. It's my preferred option and is much quicker and easier once you're used to it.

Clarification: under typical environments, it's not necessary to do so - you can grab the window edges as expected. As petepete says, it's convenient.

cmd-shift-first letter will activate nearly any dialog box button. Some folks griped when the first marzipan/combine apps wouldn't support that, but I believe they caught up sometime last spring.

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