Comments on: Making Sense of Mac Keyboard Symbols

By: brandonjp

brandonjp — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 01:29:34 +0000

I’ve always though of it, starting from the top left of the symbol and traveling horizontally, the line is a route or a path and it could keep moving from left to right, but shows the path changing directions and taking the “optional” or “alternative” route

By: Venetia

Venetia — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:56:26 +0000

Hi I don’t understand what the § means can anyone explain ;-/

By: Chad

Chad — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 14:41:46 +0000

The funny thing I’ve always noticed about Mac vs. Win is that when detailing shortcuts, Apple opts to use a series of lines, slashes, and circles, and hieroglyphics whereas on Windows, if you need to press Shift, it will say “Shift”.

One of the most frustrating things when teaching someone new to OSX, is the shortcuts. “Here’s a shortcuts cheat sheet!” “Great! ….but what do these symbols mean?”

“Here’s a cheat sheet for the symbols so you can use the cheat sheet for the shortcuts”

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 21:17:28 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Lri and the article author! I’m a software engineer, a 15+ year Windows user, 10+ year casual Linux user, and just bought my first Mac (2012 MBP). The cryptic symbols have been the most perplexing thing about these first few days of ownership. Now if I could just get my Matrox TripleHead2Go working…

By: rich12345

rich12345 — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:11:35 +0000

It confused the hack of me too. For example the Option symbol looks more like a shift because it looks like a ladder step up, and the shift key symbol is ^, how do the users supposed to know that that is shift key? the escape symbol looks like the TimeMachine icon. Why do Apple just print all these symbols along with the labels on the keyboard?

By: Instantly See All Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac Apps with CheatSheet

Instantly See All Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac Apps with CheatSheet — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:25:11 +0000

[...] or try releasing and holding Command again and it should activate. Also if you’ve forgotten the meaning of Mac keyboard symbols it may be a good time to review those really [...]

By: 31 Useful Safari Keyboard Shortcuts

31 Useful Safari Keyboard Shortcuts — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:37:56 +0000

[...] useful. If you’re looking through the menus and wondering what some of those symbols are, our recent post on Mac keyboard symbols should help decipher some of the peculiar looking [...]

By: Kristjan

Kristjan — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:04:36 +0000

Harvey says it all…
But to nitpick, the “cloverleaf” symbol of the command key is actually not a campsite, it is used for “a place of interest”, museum, church, natl. parks etc. (campsite is a “teepee” tent).

As for remembering, it’s not that hard, command is by far the most common and is used all the time so it should be in the muscle memory quite fast.

I find all the other symbols are kind of descriptive when thinking about them, except control, so I came up with mnemonic way that works for me:
The control symbol looks like the v-stripes military officers carry, the more stripes you have, the more “control” you have over things!

By: Alain

Alain — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:26:25 +0000

Me too !
Still remember the time of Open-Apple and Solid-Apple keys! Abbreviated OA and SA ! You’ll need an Apple ][ + to see them again !

By: void

void — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:22:39 +0000

If you’re on a MacBook or using a wireless keyboard, Fn-⌫ will work as ⌦.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:22:36 +0000

In days of yore, when dinosaurs weren’t just in zoos and computers only had text-based applications, and screen space was at a premium, the caret was used to indicate control: ^C was control C for example. Back then, ^^ was control-caret. Run the terminal and type “nano” to see this convention in action. The light, caret-like symbol is perfect for Control. It goes all the way back to the days when Alan Turing said, “Let there be computers.” And there were.

The option symbol, as someone noted, looks like a railroad switch. Imagine a teensy train coming from the left; it has two possible ways to go. Options, if you will.

Apple needed a symbol for Command, so a woman at Apple came up with the “cloverleaf” symbol. It’s used on road maps in Scandinavia to indicate camp sites, and it was easily adapted to “command.”

I guess the original idea was that pictographs were easier to recognize at a glance, but as people switched to the Mac, it was easier just to spell out the words. I’m used to the symbols and I like them, but I understand the problems tyros face. I was one myself long ago.

By: Socapex

Socapex — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:48:37 +0000

Option is the SAUCEPAN!!! Yes… the saucepan!! Mwahahaha… ahem, sorry

By: Danny

Danny — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:23:36 +0000

I am a fairly new Mac user (Made the jump from Windows) and I have always wonder how can do do this “- ⌦: forward delete” because sometimes It comes in handy, but I have no clue how to use it.

Can anybody help me with that?

THanks!

By: Stewart

Stewart — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:17:38 +0000

I’m with you there!!!

By: Budges

Budges — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:27:18 +0000

I notice some of these symbols don’t show up on the iPad at all. Looks to me that Apple is phasing them out then.