Two top Command key tricks for the Apple Mac you should know

There are special keys on the Apple Mac keyboard, Shift, Ctrl, Option and Command, which modify actions and menus. Most keyboard shortcuts are well known, but here are two you don't know.

One of the best known effects produced by these special keys is the Option/Alt key effect. Open almost any menu in the menu bar and then hold down the Option/Alt key. In may cases, one or more items on the menu changes. For example, a Save menu may become Save As. The changes are different with each app and holding down Option/Alt reveals features you never knew existed in macOS and apps.

Anything that makes life simpler and easier is welcome and modifying the action of certain items using the Mac's special keys can save a little time and effort. Special keys can make awkward things easy and pressing them reveals hidden menu options and functions.

What is less well known is the effect of the Command key. It can modify menus and actions, but it is rarely mentioned, so these tips may be new to you.

Command key on the menu

Go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of the screen and let the mouse hover over Recent Items. It shows a list of applications that have been used recently and below this is a section titled Documents and it contains files that have recently been opened.

Clicking an app in the menu runs it and it saves you having to hunt for it in the Applications folder. Clicking one of the documents on the menu opens it in the app it is associated with. For example, a jpg image would open in the Preview app. That is fairly obvious of course, but there is more.

While the Recent Items menu is showing, hold down the Command key and watch everything magically change. Recent items becomes Show ... in Finder. Take a look, better still, try it yourself.

We all knw that app are stored in the Applications folder, so showing their location isn't that useful. Instead of BBEfit.app it now has Show “BBEdit.app” in Finder. That isn't important.

Where this is useful is in the Documents section below the apps and instead of a list of document filenames, it has Show “filename” in Finder. If you now click one of the document sin this menu, macOS does not run it or open it. Instead it opens a Finder window to show the folder where the item is stored on the disk.

This is useful on occasions because sometimes you cannot remember where you stored a document, photo or other file. All you need to do is to press the Command key and click the document instead of normal clicking and you will instantly see where it is located.

It can also be useful when you want to perform file operations, such as copying, moving, renaming or deleting, on a recently accessed file. You can instantly open a Finder window showing the file.

Spotlight Command modifier

This Command key trick works in Spotlight search results lists too. Click the Search icon in the top right corner of the screen or press Command+Space (another handy use for the Command key). Here are the results of a search for 'tips' that has been performed. There are several sections in the Spotlight results and there may be documents or images among the other results.

Here is an image that matches the search results and you can see the file type, size and date, but where is it located on the disk drive?

Press the Command key and the information displayed in the highlighted file changes to show the path to the document.

Click a file in the results and the Spotlight results change and a preview panel opens. It depends on the type of file and here is an image file, so you see an image thumbnail. Hold down the Command key and you can see the path in the bottom right corner of the Spotlight window.

What’s more, you can double click the document when the Command key is help down and instead of the file opening in the associated application, a Finder window opens to show the folder that contains the document. Knowing how to locate files on the disk can save a bit of time and effort hunting for them.

Related: Customise Spotlight and solve indexing problems in macOS