UsingMac.com

Dialog Button. The Most Basic Mac Usability

After several times going further to the tweaking process, often we forgot the very basic usability that we will need in using our Mac, which is well-known yet often ignored, i.e. choosing dialog button with keyboard.

Setting needs to be done are very minor comparing to major advantages and boost in productivity that will be gained. Let's follow the instructions on how to use keyboard to select dialog box button.

Enabling Full Keyboard Access

Full keyboard access is the main role for today. With full keyboard access, we can use our tab key to traverse through dialog buttons, that will give us blue highlight as indicator. Here is how to set it.

Open System Preferences
Go to Keyboard & Mouse and under Keyboard Shortcuts section
Quickly glance at the bottom of the pane and select radio button All controls
For the whole step, actually can be replaced by pressing Control-Fn-F7

Shown Above. Full Keyboard Access Set to All Controls

Now the option to navigate through your dialog buttons has been enabled.

Navigating through Dialog Buttons

Has been said earlier, you can use tab key to move around button's indicator. There are two types of indicators can be seen on dialog box, one button is highlighted and one button is filled with blue color (provided that you use default Leopard theme).

Shown Above. Dialog Box Appeared Upon Quitting Safari

spacebar for highlighted button
enter for filled button
escape for doing nothing and closing dialog box

Note. If you can't see the button in blue highlight, you should try to set full keyboard access again

Special thanks to reader SomeDude for this precious sweet little trick.

Categories: Tips and Tricks
Tags: Button, Usability

Subscribe to RSS Leave a Comment (10)

Related Entries

Some articles taken from our resource base, tightly related to current article, to empower you with more knowledge on tweaking the most out of your Mac.

10 Comments

k0ev

back to basics :-)

Rusty

Whats the point of having a highlighted button in addition to a filled button? Why couldn't the TAB key move the filled key around and allow the user to then use the ENTER key to select? This feels like the result of an Apple programmer not being able to figure out how to make it work normally, so a workaround was invented. Reminds me of the Simpson's clip spoofing Apple, where "the light is on to indicate the computer is definitely off". Something else to perpetuate disdain for Apple. But Hey! I'm sure thankful for the tip! Now, where's my BACKSPACE key?????

Rhywun

Windows has the same behavior, except the highlight is indicated by a dotted line around the button, and by default the highlighted button is the same as the filled button when a dialog opens. I like OS X's behavior because I can simply hit the space bar when I want to use the alternate button instead of tabbing through the dialog to get to it (sometimes there are more than just two buttons to tab through).

Matt

Haha, this was one of the things i have enabled on the first day i got my macbook :P
Couldn't live with out tabbing -
Windows stuff ¬¬ alt tab.. cmd tab.. tabtabtaaaaab :P

NaVi

@ Rhywun:  same for me =)

scott

This sucks because when you boot from an Apple install DVD (Mac or Mac server) you can't do it without a mouse.
WIth this enabled, you can.
But you can't enable on those DVDs when booted.
Crazy...

Riker

@Rusty

It's a time-saver.  The most-commonly used option is filled in so it's always a single keystroke away, no matter which button is highlighted.  You can tab+space to less common options, or just hit enter.

Phil

Thanks for the tip... 
I have known about enabling full keyboard access, but I never knew that the space key activated the highlighted buttons.

joseph

thanks i was looking for these for a while, now i find it and it works...

Xero

@Rusty Honestly, a BACKSPACE key? I think you've been using windows to long ;D

Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users