What is the easiest way to learn all of the Mac keyboard shortcuts, you ask? For starters, you can use a Mac app called Hotkey EVE. It’s a cool app that will teach you the matching shortcut for any actions that you perform with your trackpad and mouse. For instance, if you use your trackpad or mouse to open a new tab in Google Chrome, EVE will display a notification letting you know the keyboard shortcut for opening new tabs in Chrome. Luckily, getting up and learning with EVE is quite simple. Here’s how it works.
Getting Started
- You’ll need to download Hotkey EVE from the official website. Once you unzip the downloaded file, you can drag the app file to your Applications folder.
- When you first start the app, you’ll get a notification letting you know that you need to register EVE. To do so, just click on the notification to open up the registration form in your browser. Please know that this is not a requirement.
- Even though EVE is free to use, you’ll see the “Register this app” notification bugging you every so often. Registering EVE will get you an activation key that you can enter to stop the notifications and show your support; it’s only a one-time fee of $2.50.
Usage
EVE works right out the box. As you’re going about your daily tasks and performing actions with your mouse, you’ll get a notification (via the Notification Center) that will display the applicable keyboard shortcut for that action (if there is one).
As you’ve probably figured out, repetition is the key to learning your keyboard shortcuts. After you’ve seen the same notification for a keyboard shortcut over and over again, you’re going to remember it.
Shortcut Browser
EVE also has a Shortcut Browser that you can use to enable and disable shortcut notifications globally – across all of your apps. From the menu bar icon select Shortcut Browser, or you can use the keyboard shortcut “Command + S”.
The Shorcut Browser window will appear and you’ll see all of your applications that support keyboard shortcuts along with their menus, command names, and shortcuts. You can go through each one disabling shortcuts that you don’t want to get notified about. Note: This feature will really come in handy for those shortcuts you’ve already memorized. There’s no need to get notifications about them if you already know them like the back of your hand.
Conclusion
That’s all there is to learning your Mac keyboard shortcuts; with EVE it’s a piece of cake! Just to be sure that you don’t miss a thing, you can choose to have the app start at login – via the menu bar icon. You can also pause the app if you’re tired of receiving notifications and need a break. Hotkey EVE is definitely a lifesaver. Good luck learning all of the keyboard shortcuts for your apps! Let us know how EVE works for you.
