Update: Now you can skip all these instructions and just download my KeyFixer application to fix your home and end keys. Read the new article …
The default behavior of OS X’s “home” and “end” keys drives me nuts. In every other operating system that I’ve used, these keys move your cursor to the beginning (home) or end (end) of your current line. Thankfully, Dreamweaver on the mac behaves this way, but everything else behaves oddly (usually moving you to the beginning or end of the entire document, and sometimes moving just the focus, while leaving the cursor in place).
Today, I decided to try to change this default behavior, and thanks to this blog post by Jon Evans, it was easy. Thanks for the tip Jon!
Update: If the files don’t already exist, you need to create them. Here’s the easy way to do it in Terminal (easier, because Finder doesn’t let you see hidden files easily).
Open Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) and type the following commands:
cd ~/Library/
then
ls
Now, if you don’t see the KeyBindings folder, type
mkdir KeyBindings
Go into the KeyBindings Directory
cd KeyBindings
Make or Edit DefaultKeyBinding.dict
nano DefaultKeyBinding.dict
This opens the nano text editor. Paste these lines from the tutorial in into the file.
{
/* Remap Home / End to be correct */
"\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"$\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"$\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
}
Update: After reinstalling my computer and upgrading to OS X 10.4.7 the above lines did not work. It seems that not all browsers (including mine) were displaying the code properly and the biggining “\” character was being cut off. Sorry about that! If this code didn’t work for you before, try it again now.
I also did some seaching and found this article on the TextMate blog. The following lines from that article add a “fix” for the page up and page down keys.
{
/* home */
"\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"$\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
/* end */
"\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"$\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
/* page up/down */
"\\UF72C" = "pageUp:";
"\\UF72D" = "pageDown:";
}
press control-x to exit (make sure you save the file).
Now, you don’t need to restart OS X, just any applications that you want to use the new KeyBindings in. Remember, this still doesn’t work right in Firefox. Also remember that you’re changing system setting (in this case, just for the user you’re logged in as) and you should always be careful when making system changes :)
Am I supposed to create the folder “KeyBindings” and then create a text file called “DefaultKeyBinding.dict”?
And then am I supposed to restart OSX?
This works great for Terminal.app. Unfortunately it won’t work in conjunction with the “DoubleCommand” extension (http://doublecommand.sourceforge.net/) If you are using DoubleCommand you must disable “PC style home and end keys” first.
Actually, the HOME and END keys do exactly what they should in OS X; they scroll to the very top or bottom of the current document. To go to the start or end of the current line, all you need to do is use CMD+left-arrow or CMD+right-arrow
This all seems totally pointless to me and is just a futile exercise in trying to force OS X to conform to a keybinding from Win XP that you can’t seem to unlearn.
THANK YOU! This has been one of the things that has frustrated me most since getting a Mac – beginning and end of line are pretty basic and should really have one key (not cmd + key) functionality.
Thanks so much! It makes things sane.
To James M: It is never pointless to make applications behave the way you want them to. Moreover, configurability is a desireable thing because it helps people who are switchng from one OS to another.
As far back as DOS days, my word processer (PC-Write) make it very easy to change key-bindings with the idea that key press behavior should seem “normal” to the user. If I press Page-Up I am actually expecting the page to move down so I can see higher up. Some people would want the Page-Up key to literally move up the page.
Having a personal laptop or workstation means I can customize it to work most effectively and efficiently for me.
Doesn’t seem to effect application like Eclipse at all. I still have to use the retarded @pple+arrow.
James M: Just for my own historical knowledge can you name a system that uses this sort of key binding? It’s not just Windoze that uses home/end for the begining/end of a line, so far every OS I’ve used (at least to the best of my recolection) uses them for begining/end of line, be that Solaris, VMS, Linux, BSD, or Win/DOS.
omg, thank you. I too use many OSes (HPUX, Linux, Windows and Mac OSX every day) and the home, end, page up, page down keys have been killing me on the Mac. The Mac is my favorite desktop OS and ‘nix in general my favorite server OS and no matter how used to OSX I’ve become those keyboard commands never ever felt right (apple+arrow what?). I am ok with apple+C/X/V for copy, cut, paste but hitting home and end all the time and getting either no response or the wrong response sucked. This post just improved my life. You rock! ^^
It still doesn’t work for me in Thunderbird, Firefox, and Eclipse. Does anyone know of a way to fix this, since these are the apps that I use most often for typing?
Thanks!
jasminerain,
Yes, I do know how to fix it in Firefox, but it’s not exactly an easy process. I’m working on a script that you can run to patch your copy of Firefox. It’s the same deal with Thunderbird.
Okay eclipse doesn’t follow anyones default key layout, it is standard based on the version you down load… so basicly to get this to work do this:
Eclipse -> Preferences -> General -> Keys
Under the pull down menu Catagory select Text Editing and under name Line Start and Line End for home and end respectfully
Select the text in the Assignments window
Hit Remove
under Name press the home key
select add
You should now have the home and end keys going to the begining and end of the line.
Most of this came from here but you don’t need to do anything hard from what I found:
http://www.kelek.com/blog/2006/09/16/fixing_home_end.html
While this works great for a number of applications, it doesn’t work at all for the terminal.
I did find http://tech.inhelsinki.nl/gnu_developement_under_mac_os_x/ which helped though
The macro program Keyboard Maestro fixed this for me.
Any luck yet with the Firefox patch?
Jordan,
Actually, yes. Anyone who’d like to beta test the Firefox patch, send me an email at jim at starryhope
James M, cry us a river. Home = home of the current line, end = end of the current line. It’s a basic UI principle.
Also forgot to mention – THANK YOU SO MUCH for this. It’s a lifesaver.
This worked wonders!!! Thanks a bunch!
Just an FYI – while the Home and End keys work logically in Dreamweaver, the PgUp and PgDn keys don’t, but they can be easily modified by going to Dreamweaver > Keyboard Shortcuts.
If you haven’t already, you’ll have to duplicate the standard set to make a modifiable set. Then select “Code Editing” from the drop down and locate “Move to start of page” and “Move to end of page” and set them to the appropriate keys.
Thanks to the creator for these easy fixes for the keyboard! Apple’s default is unnatural and annoying and definitely slows the productivity if you didn’t grow up with it…
I’m using Firefox on Linux.
Home scrolls to the start of the page. End scrolls to the end of the page. Just like the Mac.
I guess this is some Windows thing I’m not used to?
“Actually, the HOME and END keys do exactly what they should in OS X; they scroll to the very top or bottom of the current document. To go to the start or end of the current line, all you need to do is use CMD+left-arrow or CMD+right-arrow
This all seems totally pointless to me and is just a futile exercise in trying to force OS X to conform to a keybinding from Win XP that you can’t seem to unlearn.”
ACTUALLY, if you are using a MacBook Pro, there is no page up page down option.. only home, end, and beginning and end of line. Scrolling a page at a time with the keyboard is a mystery.
Quote from James M
>> This all seems totally pointless to me and is just a futile exercise in trying to force OS X to conform to a keybinding from Win XP that you can’t seem to unlearn.”
Here’s the reason for me: I use a windows PC at work. Mac at home. For me, it’s difficult to keep the key combinations straight. To make matters worse, I sometimes access my work (PC) computer remotely from home (Mac). It’s just nice to have options.
Thanks for the hint Mac OS X is driving me nuts can’t wait until Ubuntu runs nice on the new santa rosa mac book pro, so that I can ditch Mac OS X. I want to configure “everything” like I can with KDE.
Anyways @tom: On the mac book pro you can page up and page down if you hold down the fn key while pressing the page up or down keys.
cheers
Marcel
http://www.cfavatar.com
P.S. Don’t start a flame war cause I prefer KDE. My employees hate it which is ok too.
James M has the greatest response here. Accomplishes exactly what you want, with a key functionality already defined.
OMG – I love you!!! The OS and Firefox fixes have made my life with a new iMac so much easier. I tried to make the .dict file myself but it didn’t work for some reason – you’re a real life saver. :)
Thank you all!
This has been driving me crazy. The canned response from mac heads seems to always be “you’re just not doing it right.” When every other computer system on the planet does one thing and one does it differently, it’s nice to be able to make that one conform. thank you!
In my opinion coming up with a “correct” or “more correct” shortcut, and indeed in determining any behaviour in UI design, should be driven by most-use winning out over others.
That is, how many times a day do you need to go to the absolute end of a document compared to how many times do you need to go to the end of a line? Everyone’s needs are different, but for the work that I regularly do, I need to go to the end of a document about 1 out of 1,000 times. Whereas I need the end-of-the-line functionality 999 out of 1,000. So I prefer the default behaviour of “end key”=”end of line” ala windows.
Maybe the MAC designers have a pressing need to get to the end of their documents more than I do? Or do they just want to be “different”? Who knows.
So with a MacBook Pro and OS X 10.4.10, Command and Left Arrow is home for the current line and Command and Right Arrow is end for the current line and this works on the laptops keyboard.
If I plug in the Apple usb keyboard, neither pressing Home or End on their own, or with the Command key work?
Does anyone know how to make the home and end keys work when using and external usb keyboard?
Thank you!
That’s been driving me nuts also!
To Ben:
I’m also using external USB keyboard and after this DefaultKeyBinding.dict, home, end, pageup and pagedown keys work the way I want it – home/end of current line and page up/down with the cursor!
To bad Apple is to retarded to use normal keybindings by default. These little quirks take a great platform and hinder it in stupid little ways. Every other platform I’ve used in the past decade or so uses standard meanings for certain keys and key bindings and Apple has to go and make them funky for no real purpose – it certainly doesn’t make the system work any better.
This app saves me ! I can’t manage to learn the macosx shortcut. The “end key” ala windows is the best way for me. Thank you so much.
The mac only users can’t understand this feature as the never work on windows.
Windows Keybindings:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/KeyBindings/Windows%20Bindings.dict
Emacs (using Esc metakey):
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/KeyBindings/Emacs%20Esc%20Bindings.dict
Emacs (using Opt metakey):
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/KeyBindings/Emacs%20Opt%20Bindings.dict
Customizing the Cocoa Text System:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/cocoa-text.html
FYI when modifying in eclipse, you have to remove the “Text Start” and “Text End” keybindings. It took me a while to figure this out.
Honestly, you can’t imagine how PLEASED I am. This thing drove me NUTS for a long long time. And yeah mac is retarded for not offering a feature to fix these things.
Thanks!
Anyone miss having an “insert” key on the Mac? Don’t think I’ll be mapping that functionality any time soon. Thank you for these tips on Home and End, I thought my keyboard was broken the first time I tried to use them. I used Mac from 1984 to 1997 and I don’t remember having these keys, so when I saw them on my new Mac I thought they would behave in the conventional manner. I’d be pretty disappointed if “Return” didn’t include a line feed, two keys named “delete” is a bit weak too – even with the little [X]> symbol on one of them. The warnings you get about removing USB devices without first ejecting take a little getting used to as well.
Overall a great product.
Thank you so much for releasing this fix! The “wrong” behaviour of those keys has been one of the most annoying things on the MAC – which is pretty flawless otherwise :-)
The Firefox fix works like a charm, too.
Worked like a charm in VMWare Fusion. Thanks for the help!
Anu.
Thank you so much! That was totally painless!
Thank you!
now this key work as i want :)
it was REALLY boring to edit something on a remote server without end/home, when i have to edit something of long it takes mins to get to the right point.
Also, cmd+arrow, doesnt’t work on terminal+ssh+pico on a remote server, just to reply to one of the first message :)
Cheers
I have found a simple way in OSX Leopard which is simply
I added the Control+End to go to the end of document and Shift+End+End to select all to the end of document.
{
/* home */
“\UF729″ = “moveToBeginningOfLine:”;
“$\UF729″ = “moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:”;
“^\UF729″ = “moveToBeginningOfDocument:”;
“$^\UF729″ = “moveToBeginningOfDocumentAndModifySelection:”;
/* end */
“\UF72B” = “moveToEndOfLine:”;
“$\UF72B” = “moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:”;
“^\UF72B” = “moveToEndOfDocument:”;
“$^\UF72B” = “moveToEndOfDocumentAndModifySelection:”;
/* page up/down */
“\UF72C” = “pageUp:”;
“\UF72D” = “pageDown:”;
}
In my browser your instructions are showing up as 2 \’s, but what worked for me is just one, like “\UF…”. OK someone else probably already said that, but it’s ok.
Thanks so much! Editing code in XCode just became much less annoying.
It didn’t work for me. I followed every step and now my home and end keys don’t do anything at all. I tried it in mail application and in nano editor. Anyone experiencing the similar problems?
Cheers
Using only one \ worked for me as well. Thanks Steve.
Also, the ~ in the very first line of the instructions looks like a – on my screen.
Why are there so many people determined to do it the Wrong Way? I came from the Windows world, and I’ve had a Mac for the last couple of years, but you don’t hear me complain about the missing Start menu…? Cmd+Arrow is so ridiculously superior to using out-of-the-way keys like Home or End. Sorry everybody – it’s just Fitts Law – the Command and arrow keys are closer and easier to push than Home and End. Why would you WANT to use the Home and End keys for something so common as finding your way to the start or end of a line?
Go ahead – type more slowly. It’s not like I mind being more productive than you are…
Wow, fantastic tip! I just got a Mac and those keys were driving me crazy.
@Ara: It won’t work for me neither (OS X 10.5.6) — I dearly miss this mapping in the ‘options’ tab of the Microsoft Natural Pro Keyboard Driver :/
Thanks for the tip! It’s great to remap the keys to do exactly what I, the user, want… not what Apple thinks I should be doing.
Btw, the Mac Book Pro without Page Up/Down keys issue simply drives me nuts. Pressing Fn-Page Up/Down is not acceptable for me — I often eat with my left hand and browse with my right hand, so I’m not going to use two hands just to page up/down. At the very least, Apple should have provided a Command-Page Up/Down alternative.
Thank you very much. This was very helpful.
Does not work in Leopard. Running 10.5.7
Thanks, I’ve been slowly accepting Mac OSX. For the most partOSX is great, but little odd ball things like the strange NON STANDARD behavior is frustrating and genuinely make it near impossible to work on as a developer that must use multiple environments.
There are numerous easy ways to quickly scroll to the top / bottom of the document, using the mouse, scroll bars, wheel, keyboard shortcuts. “Home” and “End” are the accepted standard way to move the the home and end of a line. Changing the behavior just makes OSX that much more proprietary. It certainly seems like uncle Steve being obnoxious, as I can see absolutely no benefit to the end user what so ever.
I know I need to jump to the start/end of a line A LOT more often than jumping to the beginning / end of a document. As a programmer using native OSX applications for coding / text editing is virtually useless to me. So much so that I end up launching all my development tools on via an X session.
Customization is everything here ! Doesn’t matter if you like it or not, but don’t force users to conform to what Apple thinks is good. There’s nothing more annoying than a piece of sw that some developer thought it would be smart than you.
As for the behavior of these keys, for those of you who are not around for some time, the behavior to begin and end of documents has always been CRTL-HOME and CTRL-END combo (or whatever freaky key apple decided to use).
For the frustrated people, there may be another path which is using xmodmap to change the keys mappings. Experiment by yourself. I have remapped several so I would keep my sanity when using Xcode.
In time: xmodmap -pke diskays the current mappings.
James, james, james….
This is the standard BIOS functionality here.
Home/End are supposed to work on the line. That other is MAC for ‘think differently’ IE WORK differently. I like the way the BIOS functions, thank you.
Page up/down are supposed to scroll, which of course is limited in a console.
Its the fact that mac has always had this non-standard behavior that drives me nuts.And that Apple META instead of CTRL-V for paste needs to be fixed.Apple keys should map to the rest of the standards,too.
Linux does it right.Its not a ‘windows’ issue. Its a standards issue. Apple doesn’t care for the set ANSI standard, that’s all.I don’t care about the display portion of it because its a pain to code and ugly.I prefer doing it right the first time.
The behaviour of the home and end keys are by FAR the most annoying “feature” of OS X. I constantly hit them by mistake while coding when I want to press page up or down, and this drives me crazy to no end. Option + Home/End should be the default keybinding to reach the top or bottom, imo.
Definitely works in Snow Leopard. This was driving me nuts, but this tip fixed it. Thanks!
@Ted (comment 54)
The arrow keys are out of the way just as much as the home or end keys. Anything that can’t be pressed while staying over the home row is out of the way. Vi enthusiasts (not me) could easily call your method the “Wrong Way” and they probably kill you on productivity. Besides, I would say that since you are already moving your hand off the home row for the damn arrow keys that having to use one in combination with a modifier key (CMD) makes it more work than the single-key approach of home or end.
Ah, that takes care of my urge to comment to folks who’ll never be back around see the reply.
For any other folks interested in changing up some key bindings on you mac there’s a handy GUI program for doing so here:
http://www.cocoabits.com/KeyBindingsEditor/
It’s just Shift + Apple Key + Left Arrow = Selects everything to Home
It’s just Shift + Apple Key + Right Arrow = Selects everything to End
This was very helpful, thank you Rob.
check out #66. Mitchell’s KBE actually works!!!! Finally – I get the expected response to and End and Home key that I want/expect. Thank you so much!
Thank you very much! I love it!