hi this is Gary with mac.com let me show you how to use the Mac menu bar with just the [Music] keyboard maos is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 2,000 supporters go to mmos.com patreon there you could read more about it join us and get exclusive content and course discounts so here's another video for fans of using the keyboard over the mouse or trackpad as much as possible the menu bar may seem like it's a problem here you can't even see what's available in the menu bar without using the mouse or trackpad but there are actually plenty of ways to use the menu bar to its fullest with only the keyboard the most obvious is to use the keyboard shortcuts that are already there for instance if I wanted to bold this text here I would go to the format menu and then go to font and then you could see bold right here but the keyboard shortcut is shown right there command B if you know that already you can use command B to make the selected text bold if you don't know it you only need to go to the menu bar once to find that out and hopefully you'll remember after that but what happens if there's no keyboard shortcut for instance look at striketh through there's no keyboard shortcut here well you can create your own keyboard shortcut for any item in the menu bar to do that go to system settings and then go down to keyboard then look for the button keyboard shortcuts click that to create your own custom keyboard shortcuts you want to go on the left to app shortcuts and then click the plus button and then here you want to choose the application you're using if it's something really common that's across multiple apps you could stick with all applications otherwise choose the specific app where you want to set the shortcut so I'm going to choose notes here and then you need to type the menu title now in notes this was under format under font and then it was striketh through but we don't care about format or font we just need the exact name of the menu item then you want to type that here if you get even one character wrong it's not going to work so if it's not working for you make sure that the menu title you've typed is perfect then you want to click here and then type the keyboard shortcut so let's set this as command option shift and S for strike through and now I'll click done and then I'll click done here and I'll quit system settings now if I look in the menu bar under a format font you'll see strike through has the keyboard shortcut there if you check and you don't see it here that means you mistyped the word or you've assigned a keyboard shortcut that's being used by something else so try again but now that I've got that set to strike through some text I just use the keyboard shortcut and it will do it it works the same as if you select the item in the menu bar so in this case selecting the item in the menu bar a second time will remove it and so will the keyboard shortcut now another way to access the menu bar is to use a special keyboard comp band that will activate the Vu bar but without you touching the mouse or trackpad the normal keyboard shortcut for this is choose control not command but control and then F2 now you may also need to add the FN or Globe key to that depending upon your settings we'll look at that in a minute I'm going to use control and F2 and notice how the Apple menu at the top left is now selected now I can use the arrow keys to navigate around if I use the right arrow key it will move one menu to the right I can keep moving to the right and the left Arrow key will move to the left and now I can use either the return key the space bar or the down arrow to open up that menu and it will go to the first menu item now I can continue to use the down arrow to select what I want if there's a submenu like font here I can simply use the right arrow to go over to it left Arrow will go back so if I want to get to striketh through here I can just go down to it and now I can use return or space bar and it will activate that menu item and you can see how I was able to use that menu item with just the keyboard now I'll note that the key to activate this can be found in system settings and then go back to keyboard go to keyboard shortcuts again but this time go to keyboard and look for move Focus to the menu bar first you want to make sure it's checked so that it's active but also you can customize it here so for instance I could change this by double clicking and then just choosing F2 if you're using an F key like F2 do note that you may have to add the globe or FN key to this as well to check for that go to the function keys section here and look for this switch if you've got this turned off that means that you need to add the globe or FN key if you turn it on then you don't need to anymore so now I can just choose control and F2 whereas with this turned off I need to use control the FN key and F2 to activate the menu bar here's a couple more tips to go with this if you use control and F2 to go to the menu bar and then you go to a menu like this you can jump to a specific menu item by hitting just a letter on the keyboard if I wanted to use the dashed list function notice it's the first menu item with the letter D so just pressing D will jump right down to it now I can press the space bar or return to activate it if I decide I don't want to use any item here at all I just want to exit I can use the Escape key like that now one of the problems with using control F2 is sometimes it doesn't quite work however there is another way to get to the menu bar there's a keyboard shortcut that will not jump to the Apple menu Instead The Help menu and that's to use command shift and the question mark key on us keyboards of course shift and slash is question mark So what you're really saying is command question mark but it is three keys that you need to hit so for instance if I use shift command and question mark here you can see it opens up the help menu and I can see a blinking text cursor in the search box but you can just ignore that and use the left Arrow to go backwards through the items there you're using the menu bar now exactly the same way you would as if you used control and F2 you're just starting with the help menu instead of the Apple menu I find that this is actually more reliable than contrl F2 in some cases so if I have some text selected like this I can use command shift question mark I can go back to the format menu I can go down to font and then to strike through and return without using the mouse or trackpad but there's an even better way to do this using the same keyboard shortcut so I'm going to use shift command and question mark and I've got that blicking text cursor there in Search and you would think that that allows me to search documentation which it does but it also allows me to search the menu bar items so all I need to do is start typing the name of the menu bar item I want I'll start typing striketh through and notice how it lists any menu items that match this if I had just typed St you could see how it has other ones here like match style retain style copy style that have St in it but as soon as I go to Str Str only one matches that now if I were to down arrow to it you could see how that is highlighted font strike through it also shows me where this is so I can see the format menu under font and there strike through and there's even that big blue arrow that's hovering there so this is a good way to learn where something is if you've forgotten where the menu item is located but you don't need to actually do anything else at this point except use return you can't use space here because that would just type A Space in that help field but return will actually activate font strike through so I can quickly and easily use Font strike through that way watch me do it again shift command question mark St Str it was already there but I can down arrow to it return and I've used strike through pretty quickly way faster than if I used control and F2 not as fast as a regular keyboard shortcut like command B for both but it would be faster than command B if I didn't remember that was the keyboard shortcut using the help menu like this would allow me to find it remind me where the keyboard shortcut was but also just a quick return actually activates the menu so I don't have to keep that many keyboard shortcuts in my head now if you're not using a US keyboard you might be unsure exactly how to get the help menu to come up check this and change it by going into system settings going back to keyboard and then keyboard shortcuts and then go to app shortcuts this is where you you set custom shortcuts but if you look under the category all applications there will be one item that's there by default when Mac OS is installed this is there by itself you don't need to create it it's show help menu make sure it's checked and that is where you can set it so I can actually change this to something else like F12 or something like that if I want it to be a single key press so there are a whole bunch of different ways to use the menu bar with only the keyboard hope you found this useful thanks for watching [Music] if you like this video click the Thumbs Up Button below to let me know I publish new tutorials each weekday hit the Subscribe button so you don't miss out