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I have a Macbook Air with Mac OSX 10.8.2 . I have been wondering how do I select the File Menu which I am so used to doing in Windows using Alt+F, so that I do not have to click on the File menu each time I need to do something. I googled and checked out a bunch of articles as well. This Wikipedia article suggests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts
CTRL+F2 then F. I tried this in Sublime Text and did not work for me. Any clues?
On OS X, anything that has a keyboard shortcut will be shown next to the relative task.
To access and browse the upper menu bar it is CtrlF2. You will see the icon highlight and you are able to browse the menus with the arrow keys at that point.
If you have the function keys set as special function keys, eg. dim display, play/pause, etc. you either must change them to perform as standard function keys in System Preferences » Keyboard or use the shortcut fnCtrlF2.
I also miss the ease at which I could navigate Windows menus from the keyboard :(
A couple people mentioned that you can use ctrl-F2 to get to the menu bar. This seems really awkward to me, so I took the advice of this CNET article and changed it to option-downArrow. As the article mentions, the advantage to this shortcut is that after using it, your finger is now ready for more navigation via the arrow keys. Of course you can change it to what ever seems easiest to you.
From the article, here is how to change your keyboard shortcut to access the menus:
To do this, open the Keyboard system preferences, and in the Keyboard Shortcuts section, select the Keyboard category. Then locate the option called "Move focus to the menu bar" and ensure it is checked. Then click the "^F2" hot key text so it highlights, then press the hot key of choice.
It's not perfect but it's pretty good.
To access the File menu:
File menu)File menu)Menu items can be accessed by using the first letter of the name of the item, as can items within the menu once the menu is opened.
For example, to access File > Export hit CtrlShiftF2, f, ↓, e
The answer from @Bohemian is correct - but not practical. You will want to change the key-binding for accessing the menu:
Type keyboard in Spotlight and select the Shortcuts tab:
The one you want to change is Move focus to the menu bar : I have chosen Ctl-; that is much more do-able than the crazy default finger pattern
This only reduces the pain of accessing menu items. They are still v clumsy versus counterparts on Linux variants as well as windows, the defunct OS/2 etc.
This is an ongoing HUGE miss by Apple - and it shows their disdain for keyboardists and accessibility (not to mention carpal tunnel issues) - by disallowing use of the keyboard to access the many menu items in complex applications. Intellij, Pycharm, and friends have well over one hundred menu items: it is far out of possible to create - let alone remember - that many custom shortcuts. Apple instead doubles down on their keyboard mnemonics bashing by insisting that developers remove them - even from applications originally intended for other operating systems.
Note: I have been using Macos full time 7 days/week since 2013 - and had already run into this problem - and found it essentially unsolvable - in 2010. It is not a matter of "education" about so-called alternatives.
I work with both Windows and macOS, and I actually understand and agree with Apple's unwillingness to universally dedicate a lot of alt-letter combinations to the top(not items on drop-down menus) menu bar items, because many programs would override them for their own purposes anyway and that means a great risk that you involuntarily call upon a really undesirable operation(as you may have experienced in Windows) that may or may not be undone without a lot of work.
That being said, there's a huge difference between using alt-letter combinations when the focus is on the program vs. when it's on the menu bar: Windows actually ignores the alt modifier key there; once the focus has moved to the menu bar, pressing the first character(no alt modifier key needed) of the current menu items as shortcuts to those items can(and should, IMHO) work the same as in Windows without risks(including underlining alternate shortcut characters).
The one thing that's really infuriating to me though, is that macOS doesn't respond to repeatedly pressing down on the same key; for instance, on the menu bar of my favourite editor there's an item 'Edit' and another one named 'Editor'.
When I press e, focus moves to the 'Edit' item(not opening its drop-down menu though), but when I press e agin, it doesn't move to the 'Editor' menu as it would in Windows: in stead, it moves to 'File'. At the next e, it has stopped responding to e. And if you play around a little with different letters in your menu bar, you'll find that the results are completely random: it's not even consistent, in any manner. Same thing goes for the first characters in all drop-down menus.
I've found a few peculiarities though:
• A moves focus to the apple, unless a drop-down menu is open
• Ctrl-F moves right(as in Forward); so does Ctrl-I
• Ctrl-B moves left(as in Backward)
• Ctrl-C and Ctrl-M opens a drop-down menu, if there is one at the current position; if a drop-down menu is already open, they leave the menu bar
• If a drop-down menu is open, the "Move focus to the menu bar" key(whatever it is) closes all drop-down menus but does NOT leave the menu bar
• Escape always leaves the menu bar, regardless of current position.
In Windows, Alt+spacebar opens the ubiquitous 'Window' drop-down menu on the menu bar. It's not very interesting because the options there you'll know by heart if you're a keyboard wiz.
However, I like to go there as a starting point when I'm not sure where to find the stuff I'm looking for or I'm just exploring the menus.
Therefore, in macOS I prefer alt+space as well for the "Move focus to the menu bar", for convenience.
The most useful information here for me is how powerful the >Help >Search is: that's complete news to me, fantastic. 👍
I've dedicated Ctrl-1 to the Help menu now: knowing the Windows equivalent, F1, in my sleep, Ctrl-1 is easy to remember both in terms of the key's amount (1) and its proximity to F1.
Cmd-?) and just type the text of the menu item you're looking for. You can also assign custom keyboard shortcuts to menu items, either directly in Sublime Text's configuration, or (for most other programs) in System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts » Applications.