Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

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> However, it does not support keyboard shortcuts for navigating and selecting an application!

This is the thing that is most frustrating to me about MacOS—keyboard support is clearly a second class citizen.

It seems like you're supposed to use the trackpad for everything, but when I'm docked I want to use an external keyboard and mouse. The only mouse that supports the trackpad controls that Mac assumes are available is the magic mouse, which my company helpfully provided, but the ergonomics on that mouse are terrible. It's this tiny little flat slab that offers nothing in the way of support.

If I could figure out how to control everything with the keyboard I'd swap that mouse out for an ergonomic one, but virtual workspace management with pure keyboard seems to be impossible even with Rectangle installed.

> This is the thing that is most frustrating to me about MacOS—keyboard support is clearly a second class citizen.

This has been true from the beginning of Mac OS X/OS X/macOS. Though the OS allows you to easily define keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in any application easily, there’s no way to use the system well if you don’t have a mouse (or even better, a trackpad).

And it gets even worse with Catalyst [1] apps, including Apple’s own apps like Reminders and others. It’s an exercise in futility to try to navigate those using the keyboard alone.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Catalyst

Turn on "Keyboard navigation": https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-your-keyboard-l...

It helps a little, such as being able to tab through dialog prompt buttons. Windows is still 10x better at being controlled by a keyboard but at least bridges the gap a tiny bit.

In addition to that, I use raycast to find any menu item. No mouse needed.

Command-shift-? Brings up Search in the Help menu, then type and select the menu item, also, but TIL about raycast:

https://www.raycast.com

I know, but it’s not as fast. :)

Even that does not always work. Some dialogs stubbornly refuse to respond to the tab key. In fairness, though, I think those are mostly dialogs with “dangerous” options in them: It slows down the automatic response somewhat.

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