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For Apple 101-key keyboard users, who don’t have a “Home” key: try Cmd+Up (and Cmd+Down.)

Bonus: also try Ctrl+E (and Ctrl+A) in text fields, or on the command-line.

(Both of these carry over to iOS, if you’re curious. I just tested them with the iPad keyboard-folio thing.)



The actual keys are Fn+Left and Fn+End for Home and End (Fn+Up is PageUp, etc). These will also work in Terminal apps or other places that don’t have specific Cmd-Up / Down bindings.


True; but Cmd+Up and Cmd+Down are slightly more universal across the “Apple ecosystem”, given that iOS-specific keyboards don’t have Fn keys, but do support those shortcuts. :)

Interesting aside: the “Globe” key on an iPad keyboard-folio (the one that opens the IME chooser) has some but not all of the properties of an Fn key. Globe+Left and Globe+Right work as PgUp/PgDn, but Globe+Up and Globe+Down do not work as Home/End. (Or maybe they do, but Home/End just aren’t bound in any app I’ve tested? I don’t want to write+deploy an iOS keysym tester just to find this out...)


For the record, Cmd-up/down navigates between prompts in Terminal.app


Lack of a working home/end function is literally the biggest reason I dislike working on a Mac. I don't understand what would be so hard about just having them work like they do on a PC.


Apple sells keyboards with Home/End keys, and they do what you'd expect (e.g. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQ052LL/A/magic-keyboard-...). iMacs and Mac Pros come with that type of keyboard.

You can also plug in arbitrary USB keyboards, or pair arbitrary Bluetooth keyboards, to a Mac, and the Home/End keys on those will also do what you'd expect.

Apple just doesn't bother to put Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys on their laptops — presumably because they find that people don't need them very often; and that, when the keyboard's size is already constrained, people get more value out of fewer, larger keys (while requiring key-chords for some things) vs. more, smaller keys.


> and they do what you'd expect

No, they don't. I expect pressing Home to go to the beginning of the line I am on, and I have to hit Command-Left for that, and Home does nothing of value.


Are Ctrl+e and ctrl+a Emacs conventions?


Yes, emacs navigation keybindings are native in Apple UI.

e.g. ^A ^K to clear an input line


It’s funny. Apple’s UI has taught me how to use emacs instead of the other way around.

I use Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E all the time.


cmd-up/cmd-down go to top/bottom of the document.

cmd-left/cmd-right go to beginning/end of the line.

It seems Word for Mac supports cmd-left/right but not cmd-up/down. Word also supports fn-left (home) and fn-right (end), and fn-opt-left does like ctrl+home on Windows.




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