Tip: Ctrl-Alt-Delete is not a default keyboard shortcut for anything in Mac OS X. It’s sometimes known as the three-fingered salute, and requires the use of both hands to achieve the key combination, given that the spacing of the keys is such that operation with one hand is impossible.

There’s a joke, at the expense of PC users, that says a PC keyboard only needs three keys: Ctrl, Alt and Delete, this being the key combination required to force-quit rogue programs, to bring up the Close Program dialogue box or to invoke Windows Security. In this tutorial, I will show you the various keyboard key combinations that perform particular tasks when starting up your Mac. Even after the mouse became a standard computer accessory in the mid-1980s, many programs relied on keyboard shortcuts to perform particular functions.Įven with new input devices, in addition to mice and trackpads, there is still a place for keyboard shortcuts.

Whilst the idea of the computer mouse (essentially an inverted trackball) has been around since the 1960s, many people were still using keyboards as the sole input method some twenty years on.

Mac commands list startup