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Great list of iPad keyboard commands...

P

pedregosa

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 31, 2010
248
221
There is a great list of keyboard commands — many of which I never knew of — in this article:

https://www.macstories.net/ipad-diaries/ipad-diaries-the-many-setups-of-the-2018-ipad-pro/

I think mastering these goes a long way to making up for the lack of a touchpad.
  • Command-Return: Toggle text editor focus.
  • Command-B: Boldface the selected text, or turn boldfacing on or off.
  • Command-I: Italicize the selected text, or turn italics on or off.
  • Command-U: Underline the selected text, or turn underlining on or off.
  • Option-Delete: Delete the word to the left of the insertion point.
  • Control-H: Delete the character to the left of the insertion point. Or use Delete.
  • Control-K: Delete the text between the insertion point and the end of the line or paragraph.
  • Command–Up Arrow: Move the insertion point to the beginning of the document.
  • Command–Down Arrow: Move the insertion point to the end of the document.
  • Command–Left Arrow: Move the insertion point to the beginning of the current line.
  • Command–Right Arrow: Move the insertion point to the end of the current line.
  • Option–Left Arrow: Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word.
  • Option–Right Arrow: Move the insertion point to the end of the next word.
  • Shift–Command–Up Arrow: Select the text between the insertion point and the beginning of the document.
  • Shift–Command–Down Arrow: Select the text between the insertion point and the end of the document.
  • Shift–Command–Left Arrow: Select the text between the insertion point and the beginning of the current line.
  • Shift–Command–Right Arrow: Select the text between the insertion point and the end of the current line.
  • Shift–Up Arrow: Extend text selection to the nearest character at the same horizontal location on the line above.
  • Shift–Down Arrow: Extend text selection to the nearest character at the same horizontal location on the line below.
  • Shift–Left Arrow: Extend text selection one character to the left.
  • Shift–Right Arrow: Extend text selection one character to the right.
  • Option–Shift–Up Arrow: Extend text selection to the beginning of the current paragraph, then to the beginning of the following paragraph if pressed again.
  • Option–Shift–Down Arrow: Extend text selection to the end of the current paragraph, then to the end of the following paragraph if pressed again.
  • Option–Shift–Left Arrow: Extend text selection to the beginning of the current word, then to the beginning of the following word if pressed again.
  • Option–Shift–Right Arrow: Extend text selection to the end of the current word, then to the end of the following word if pressed again.
  • Control-A: Move to the beginning of the line or paragraph.
  • Control-E: Move to the end of a line or paragraph.
  • Control-F: Move one character forward.
  • Control-B: Move one character backward
 
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Reactions: Patriks7, A.R.E.A.M., Grey Beard and 7 others
I’d discovered many of these from trial and error. I’m not sure what to think when my super advanced iPad is finally the device that forces me into learning an extensive list of keyboard shortcuts after 35 years of computing...
 
DoubleFlyaway said:
Yes. This is for people using a physical keyboard.
Click to expand...

Right. But then there is the often-overlooked “virtual trackpad” on the on-screen keyboard. I think a lot of people who complain about text manipulation on the iPad just don’t know about the tools that are available to them. For that matter, the more time I spend on the iPad Pro, the more I generally feel that a lot of the talk about limitations/roadblocks are simply because people have not mastered the different way of doing things.
 
pedregosa said:
Right. But then there is the often-overlooked “virtual trackpad” on the on-screen keyboard. I think a lot of people who complain about text manipulation on the iPad just don’t know about the tools that are available to them. For that matter, the more time I spend on the iPad Pro, the more I generally feel that a lot of the talk about limitations/roadblocks are simply because people have not mastered the different way of doing things.
Click to expand...

I really don’t think that’s it. The virtual trackpad still requires you to cover half of the screen content with a keyboard. More importantly, even basic text tools just don’t work properly. Your cursor often just disappears. Text selection via finger controls often doesn’t work accurately; you often can’t select the last character of a line, or it jumps and selects an extra line or even paragraph, or in other situations it refuses to work at all. This has been persistent behavior that Apple has failed to fix for years.
 
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