Mac OS X Keybinding Action Code

This page lists the action codes for creating keybindings on OS X.

[see macOS: Create Custom Keyboard Layout]

Action can be inserting a character, a string, moving the cursor by character, word, line, or page up/down, or open file, create new file, etc.

Text insertion

/* insert a string */
("insertText:", "good morning");

/* insert a Unicode character that has hexadecimal code 03B1 */
("insertText:", "\U03B1");

To find the character and the hexadecimal code you want, see: Unicode Search 😄 .

Cursor movement

• moveUp:
• moveDown:

• moveLeft:
• moveRight:

• moveBackward:
• moveForward:

• moveWordBackward:
• moveWordForward:

• moveWordLeft:
• moveWordRight:

• pageUp:
• pageDown:

• moveToBeginningOfLine:
• moveToEndOfLine:

• moveToBeginningOfParagraph:
• moveToEndOfParagraph:

• moveToBeginningOfDocument:
• moveToEndOfDocument:

Sample code:

{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* home key */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* end key */
}

Move Cursor and Extend Selection

Most (or all) of these actions also have a version with suffix “AndModifySelection”. For example, there's

• moveUpAndModifySelection:
• moveWordLeftAndModifySelection:
• moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:

These are the same as moving cursor but also extend the selection.

{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";

"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
}

For left-to-right languages, there is no difference between “moveLeft” and “moveBackward”. The “moveBackward” is for moving in the backward direction of the language flow.

Whenever there's a “Up”, there's also a “Down” version. Similarly, “Backward” with “Forward”, “Beginning” and “Ending”. In the following, these reverse versions omitted.

Moving the screen

• scrollLineUp:
• scrollPageUp:
• center:

Text editing

• deleteBackward:
• deleteWordBackward:
• deleteToBeginningOfLine:
• deleteToBeginningOfParagraph:

• copy:
• cut:
• paste:

• undo:
• redo:

• setMark:
• yank:
• deleteToMark:
• selectToMark:

• selectWord:
• selectLine:
• selectParagraph:
• selectAll:

• insertText:
• insertNewline:
• insertLineBreak:

Text Transformation

• capitalizeWord:
• lowercaseWord:
• uppercaseWord:

Common Mac Operations

• newDocument:
• openDocument:
• checkSpelling:

• saveDocument:
• saveDocumentAs:
• saveAllDocuments:
• revertDocumentToSaved:
• printDocument:

• performZoom:
• performClose:
• performMiniaturize:
• hide:

Sequence of Actions

You can create a sequence of actions, like this:

/* insert bracket pairs and move cursor in-between */
"~k" = ("insertText:", "()", "moveLeft:");

/* copy all file content */
"~c" = ("selectAll:", "copy:");

For key syntax, see: Mac OS X Keybinding Key Syntax .

back to macOS: Create Custom Keyboard Layout