Keyboard Shortcuts – A 5 Minute Window

https://youtu.be/77kPfmjD7gU

Yay! I made it to 10!

What’s that… 50 minutes of video. Not bad.

Now…

Today, let’s talk about something that you may, or may not, have noticed.

I’m on a Mac. And if you familiar with Mac’s you may be asking: “Where is the dock?” and “How is he switching apps without anything showing on the screen?”

Maybe you aren’t. And that’s OK too.

But I do try to use the keyboard as much as possible. Otherwise, the constant reaching for the mouse takes its toll on my arms and wrists. Plus, I find that with a little learning you can be a lot more efficient.

So:

  • I hide the dock.
  • I could then Cmd-Tab to switch apps. That’s still possible.
  • But I learned about “Hyper Keys” once. A hyper key is where you map an unused key – normally caps-lock to some unused modifier key combination – usually Cmd-Alt-Ctrl-Shift. And then you can “Hyper-<something>” and build up a set of new shortcuts. This was cool for a while.
  • Then I got a StreamDeck and used that to switch apps. That was fun.
  • THEN, I found a cheap, simple app called rcmd.

rcmd kinda maps your right Cmd key to a sort-of hyper key
and then allows you to use it for switching applications. rcmd has a simple interface, and tries to work automatically. I’ve set it for things like

  • rcmd-V opens VS Code
  • rcmd-P opens PHPStorm
  • rcmd-A opens Arc – a web browser
  • rcmd-C opens Chrome
  • rcmd-I opens iTerm – my terminal.

Now, after a bit of learning, I can switch around quickly and easily.

See? I LOVE this way of working!