Using the Mac without a Mouse

[dazzer21-2]

I'm sure you used to be able to do this in the good old days of OS9, but now I've got a Magic Mouse that can't be used when plugged in to charge, I wondered if this was an OSX thing I'd missed. Is there a way to tab through the buttons of an open window (say a File Dialogue Box) with keystrokes as opposed to using the mouse? I see that if you Cmd-Tab you can switch between open applications, but haven't delved any deeper than that so far. Can it be done. On the latest version of Sierra.

 

[mikecwest]

I'm sure you used to be able to do this in the good old days of OS9, but now I've got a Magic Mouse that can't be used when plugged in to charge, I wondered if this was an OSX thing I'd missed. Is there a way to tab through the buttons of an open window (say a File Dialogue Box) with keystrokes as opposed to using the mouse? I see that if you Cmd-Tab you can switch between open applications, but haven't delved any deeper than that so far. Can it be done. On the latest version of Sierra.

I think in MacOS 9, or maybe it was 5, 6, 7, I don't know... You could press something five times, then you could use the arrow keys instead of mouse. It has been so long, I can not remember exactly...I just remember there was a way to do it.

Anyway, on to the solution.....

"OS X Yosemite: (appears to work in SIERRA as well) Control the pointer using MouseKeys. When Mouse Keys are on, you can move the mouse pointer and press the mouse button usingthe keyboard or numeric keypad. To quickly turn Mouse Keys on or off, press Option-Command-F5, then select or deselect the Enable Mouse Keys checkbox."

SOLUTION SNAGGED FROM:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18381?locale=en_US

 

[AZhappyjack]

I'm sure you used to be able to do this in the good old days of OS9, but now I've got a Magic Mouse that can't be used when plugged in to charge, I wondered if this was an OSX thing I'd missed. Is there a way to tab through the buttons of an open window (say a File Dialogue Box) with keystrokes as opposed to using the mouse? I see that if you Cmd-Tab you can switch between open applications, but haven't delved any deeper than that so far. Can it be done. On the latest version of Sierra.

There's an option on the Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard Preference widget to enable this... setting this option to ALL CONTROLS should allow you to tab through every item on the page/dialog box.