Home and End Keys on the Mac

February 05, 2008

Here’s how it is:

On a pc, the home and end keys will take the cursor to the start (home) or the end (end) of the current line.

On the Mac, these keys change the location of the viewport to the top (home) or the bottom (end) of the document. The cursor doesn’t move.

I like the functionality of the pc keys, and it finally drove me to the point of Googling. So, here is the Mac equivalent of the pc home and end keys, plus a bunch of extras:

command + right arrow: moves the cursor to the end of the current line
command + left arrow: moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line
command + up arrow: moves the cursor to the beginning of the first line of the document, and changes the viewport to correspond
command + down arrow: moves the cursor to the end of the last line of the document, and changes the viewport to correspond
option + right arrow: moves the cursor to the end of the current word
option + left arrow: moves the cursor to the beginning of the current word
option + up arrow: moves the cursor to the beginning of the current paragraph
option + down arrow: moves the cursor to the end of the current paragraph

Include the shift key to any of these key combos and you’ll select all the text between the starting position and the finishing position of the cursor. And apparently command and control are interchangeable here.

Posted lovingly by Ryan 0 Comments 0 Trackbacks Permalink