If you have iOS 7 running as the operating system on your iPhone or iPad, you may not know that you can create shortcuts to make it easier to get things done. Along with creating your own shortcuts, you can also make use of a number of keyboard shortcuts that Apple hasn’t announced, but are available for you to us. These shortcuts are very helpful in helping to navigate through apps and do things such as increase or decrease the volume of your music.
To assign your own keyboard shortcuts, go to System Preferences, and then tap Keyboard. From that point, click on the + icon and choose an app from the popup menu that will appear, or you can choose All Applications if you want to assign a global shortcut that will work with as many apps that will allow customized shortcuts. If the app you want to select does not appear in the list, choose Other and locate it using the Open dialog. Not all apps will allow shortcuts, so you will only be able to find the ones that do.
After you have chosen the apps, or all apps, to assign a shortcut to on your iPhone or iPad that is running iOS 7, you will be able to type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field. Make sure to type the name exactly how it appears in the Application menu. That includes ellipses and any other punctuation.
An ellipsis is a special character that looks like three periods. To type an ellipsis in order to be exactly add shortcuts, tap Option-semicolon, or use the Character Viewer. It may be difficult to know whether the command is written in the menu with a real ellipsis or with three periods, so if one does not work, try the other. When you are finished doing that, tap in the in the Keyboard Shortcut field, press the key combination that you want to assign to the menu command, and then click Add.
When you have finished adding your shortcut options you will need to restart any apps that you are using before these shortcuts start to work. If you used one that already exists for another command or another app, it might not work properly. To fix that, find the menu command that is currently using it and then reassign the keyboard shortcut for that item. If you decide you don’t want to use a particular shortcut that you have added, you can remove it by tapping on Delete. Either that or you can restore all shortcuts to their original settings by choosing, Restore Defaults.
Here is a list of shortcuts that you may be unaware of as listed by iPhoneHacks:
System Shortcuts
- F1 Dim screen
- F2 Brighten screen
- F7 Back one song
- F8 Play/pause
- F9 Skip song
- F10 Mute
- F11 Decrease volume
- F12 Increase volume
- ⌘ Space Display a list of available languages; to choose one, tap the space bar again.
Text Selection and Navigation for iPad
IPad uses the same type of shortcuts as what are programmed into a Mac. If you have all ready been using these, it should be easy for you to remember them for your iPad.
- ⌘C Copy
- ⌘X Cut
- ⌘V Paste
- ⌘Z Undo
- ⌘⇧Z Redo
- ⌘Delete to Delete the text to the beginning of the line
- Control K to Delete the text to the end of the line
- Alt (Option) Delete to Delete the word before the cursor
- ⌘↑ Jump to top of document
- ⌘↓ Jump to bottom of document
- ⌘← Jump to beginning of line
- ⌘→ Jump to end of line
- Alt↑ Jump to previous start of line
- Alt ↓ Jump to next end of line
- Alt ← Jump to previous word
- Alt → Jump to next word
- ⇧↑ Select the text above
- ⇧↓ Select the text below
- ⇧← Select the text on the left
- ⇧→ Select the text on the right
- ⇧⌘↑ Select all the text to the beginning of the document
- ⇧⌘↓ Select all the text to the end of the document
- ⇧⌘← Select the text to the beginning of the line
- ⇧⌘→ Select the text to the end of the line
- ⇧Alt↑ Select the text above, line by line
- ⇧Alt↓ Select the text below, line by line
- ⇧Alt← Select the text on the left, word by word
- ⇧Alt→ Select the text on the right, word by word
iPad Navigation
In order to use the following shortcuts, you need to make sure VoiceOver is enabled. To do this open up your Settings app from your Home screen, tap on General and then on Accessibility and toggle the VoiceOver option to On. If you don’t want to use the VoiceOver option, you can turn that off by pressing Control + Option + S.
- Control Option H Home button
- Control Option H H Show multitask bar
- Control Option i Item chooser
- Escape Back button
- → next item
- ← previous item
- ↑↓ simultaneously tap selected item
- Option↓ scroll down
- Option↑ scroll up
- Option← or → scroll left or right
- Control Option S turn VoiceOver speech on or off
- Command Shift Tab switch to the previous app
- Command Tab switch back to the original app
- ←+→, then Option + ← or Option+→ navigate through Dock
Safari
- ⌘L Open Location
- ⌘T open a new tab
- ⌘W close the current tab
- ⌘R refresh the current tab
- ⌘. stop loading the current tab
- ⌘N create a new message
- ⌘⇧D send a message
- Backspace key to delete the currently selected message
- ↑ or ↓ select suggested email address in To/CC/BCC popover fields
Pages
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