Tab Through All Fields On Mac OS X

.abelafonte — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:46:27 +0000

There is a very small feature of Windows that I got accustomed to while I was stranded on a Dell back during 2003-2004. On a PC, you can tab through all fields in the interface and click with the space bar. A feature like that comes in handy when you’re a quick-key lover who doesn’t like to jump back and forth between the keys and the mouse(pad). But, what about on a Mac?

The image below is an example of a Windows alert that I could manipulate by simply tabbing to the checkbox and pressing the spacebar to select/deselect, then tab to the button option I prefer and select with spacebar once again.

To enable this awesomely useful feature in OS X, follow the steps below:

Go to System Preferences
Select ‘Keyboard & Mouse’
Click the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ tab
Choose ‘All Controls‘ under ‘Full keyboard access’ at the bottom

Voila! Now you can tab through input boxes, radio buttons and check boxes, etc in the Mac OS like you may already be used to doing in your web browser.

To disable, select ‘Text Boxes and Lists Only’ in the preferences. It may not stop immediately, though. Sometimes you have to hit Ctrl+F7 to get back to normal mode. (But why would you want to, silly!)

Accessibility – Belafonte Code

Tab Through All Fields On Mac OS X