Command-? (command shift /) opens the help menu with fast incremental search through all menubar items, showing you the shortcut of what you're interested in, and also allowing you to tap return to substitute the shortcut.

Personally, if I were designing it, I wouldn't have exposed it as a separate bar in the Help menu of the app; but rather just made it an API provider to the OS (sort of like how drag-and-drop data sources work), such that the OS search (Spotlight) could be made a "universal" search, capable of searching both the OS generally, and the currently-focused application specifically.

While I'm dreaming, imagine if you could go into Mission Control and start typing, and it'd highlight/focus the set of windows that "have" the text you're looking for (even if not necessarily scrolled into their viewport.) Like the search you can do in Safari's "tab overview" by pressing Cmd+F there, but across all windows of all apps. Once you've narrowed it down to one window, press Enter and that window will pop to the foreground—perhaps with that text pre-selected as if you had done a Cmd+F search within the app.

Or, something even less likely to happen: imagine if you could move your mouse by searching across the corpus of text visibly on-screen (presumably via interaction with the OS text-rendering layer), such that you could jump the cursor to a specific button; or even to the checkbox with a specific label.

It's discovered when someone clicks on the "Help" menu at the top of every single screen. How much more discoverable can it be without resorting to Clippy-style intrusions?

No way to know that pressing Alt shows keyboard shortcuts on windows either.

It's a killer combination, allowing you to run menu items with merely a vague notion of their name rather than a memorized jumble of modifier keys.

It's also far more convenient than Ctrl-F2 to move the mouse focus to the menu bar.

Every macOS app has a search field in the Help menu where you can instantly look up any menu item, and it’s a built-in feature of macOS, way ahead of Windows.

Disclaimer: I worked on this feature.

It was one of the biggest wow factors of macOS for me when I first started using it about 10 years ago, and it still keeps saving me a lot of time.

Thanks!!!

(and I would love to see how that is done - how the menus and their contents, were implemented to make them searchable!)

Here's to 2 more billion upvotes :-)

I’d give you a billion upvotes if I could :)

It lets you see if an app has a feature that you’re sure it must have, but don’t know exactly what it could be called or where it might be.

For example, in Xcode I just need to search “up” to see commands for moving a block up text up.

Or “blur” to see the different kinds of blur an image editor has.

> Contrast that with a menu

You misunderstood. It shows the menus which have items matching your search, in place.

https://i.imgur.com/6DieqF3.png

typed "undo close" on that search box. Nothing. clicked on the "tab" menu. still nothing. finally going back to the search box and typing "tab" it shows up as "reopen closed tab" and show me that it is in the "file" menu.

Weird application choices aside, Wonder why apple don't make that a central keyboard first command box like emacs or most code IDEs do. I mean, i don't even know how to go to that help search box without a mouse.

1. `cmd - shift - /` to jump to Help (works in any app)

2. type `tab` ["Hmm, I don't know exact shortcut to <undo close tab>, so let me start with something generic..."]

3. search through results with ctrl-n or ctrl-p.

4. As you search, different menu items show you the shortcut

And voila, your `cmd - shift - t` is the second result under "reopen closed tab"

EDIT: formatting bullets

Also, ever since non-spatial navigation became a thing in macOS, Cmd+[ and Cmd+] have become back/forward through navigation history in all contexts where there is such a thing as a navigation history. Works in Safari, Finder, System Preferences, all the iTunes-diaspora apps...

You can still run the Finder in mostly spatial by hiding the toolbar and sidebar. I prefer it that way. Then ⌘↑ does exactly what you think.

(Not tested on MacOS BS)

Aside from the fact that other users exposed the CMD+arrow shortcuts, Finder's shortcuts are also consistent with the rest of macOS, where "enter" typically renames the selection (try it with a folder in Notes, for example).

Command-up goes to the parent, command-down goes to the child. You can do the entire thing with arrow keys and command.

  WindowsKey+B
  EnterKey
  ArrowUp