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Comment by perdomon | Hacker News Reader

The worst for me is being able to select the non-default option in an alert window. Sometimes CMD + 'the first letter of the word in the button' works, but that's like a 30% chance. How is there not a standard for that? I'd even accept the arrow keys + Enter at this point.

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> How is there not a standard for that?

There was, long ago, in the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

Which apple always sets an example for by not following.

System Settings / Accessibility / Keyboard / Full Keyboard Access

This is macOS we're talking about. You can move the pointer with your face if you want (or more likely, if you need to).

Often space cycles this, for some reason.

This is a nice tip! This does not work for MacOS alerts that want you to enter data (like a file name to save), but I will be using this and the other guy's CMD + . (period) tip as much as possible in every other scenario.

If the non-default option is a cancellation or negative action, cmd-period should usually work.

This is a great tip that I didn't know about. Thank you. It doesn't work for Numbers, since I need to DELETE not Cancel the file changes, but I'm sure it'll work in a ton of other places.

Delete button in dialog: cmd-delete.

(Edit: Just tested this in numbers, works fine. In cases where the button isn't correctly tagged as a "delete" button it might not -- in that case, cmd-<first letter of button content> will almost always work.)

Absolute legend

Okay, one more question. When I have multiple terminal tabs open with processes running, I get an alert window with three options: Review Windows, Terminate Processes, Cancel:

https://imgur.com/a/mNQNRaI

I can cancel with CMD + (period), but I can't seem to select Terminate Processes with anything except the mouse, since it isn't the default option and it isn't cancel.

Any idea if this one is possible without turning on the keyboard navigation accessibility option?

It /should/ be cmd-t, but just confirmed that that doesn't work. I'd consider this a bug, and would suggest filing a radar for it.

I’ve never done that before but will! How fun!

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