Mac Kindergarten

Some readers of Mac Kindergarten wrote in, that they had trouble with the tutorials mentioning the functions keys.

Here is how to make the function keys do what you want.

If you look at the function keys, you see almost every key hast two symbols on it. One is the “F” and a number (e.g. F1, F2, etc.) and the other a special function symbol (e.g. volume up/down/mute).

Since it’s only one key, but two possible commands, you can define, how Mac OS X will react to them. It’s like writing uppercase or lowercase letters with the help of the shift key. In this case it’s not the shift key, but the Fn-key on your keyboard.
While certain users prefer to access the special functions directly (e.g. volume up/down) others prefer to use the function keys directly (e.g. direct access to Exposé).

Here is how to adjust it to your needs:

1) Open System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse

2) Click the Keyboard tab

3) In the middle of the window, check/uncheck the box Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard functions keys.

4) Now the function keys work the other way round. So now, to access the secondary function, press the Fn-key together with the function key.

To give Exposé a fresh start, the tutorials involving Exposé (and thus the function keys) are here.

 Email This Post

Tags: keyboard, quick tip

Related posts:

Quick Tip: Show all window titles simultaneously in Exposé

Quick Tip: Opening a file / parent directory in Finder by keyboard

Quick Tip: Hide an application when activating another one

Quick Tip: Empty trash bin without confirming

Quick Tip: Download files that normally open inside Safari

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 1:22 pm and is filed under keyboard glory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.