How to Use Text Editing Keyboard Shortcuts on a Mac

No arrow keys? No problem. In most places you can enter text in macOS; you can use many Emacs key bindings for editing. Find here all the keyboard shortcuts to use for editing text on a Mac.

First, a Car Ride in August Makes the Newspaper

It was King Edward Ⅶ, legend has it, who first (and last) convinced Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria to ride in an automobile.

Their summertime trip took the couple from Bad Ischl to lake Atter on August 12, 1908. According to the New York Times, the Austrian emperor “expressed his delight at the novel experience.”

Ask the people in Austria, though, and you will hear them report him saying: “It stank a lot, and I didn’t see anything.”

Now, can I convince you, perhaps, to try a new way to get to the end of the line, paragraph, or document? Let’s see what you have to say:

How to Use Text Movement and Editing Keyboard Shortcuts on a Mac

General-Purpose Mac Shortcuts

The general-purpose keyboard shortcuts for moving work anywhere you can edit text. You can use them when you write an email in Mail, on the Terminal command line, in Safari, TextEdit, etc.

Moving Around

Action	Keyboard Shortcut
one character backward	Control B
one character forward	Control F
one line up	Control P
one line down	Control N
one screen down	Control V
beginning of paragraph	Control A
end of paragraph	Control E
center display on the current line	Control L

The arrow keys, of course, also work for moving around in text:

Action	Keyboard Shortcut
one character backward	←
one character forward	→
one line up	↑
one line down	↓
one word backward	Option ←
one word forward	Option →
beginning of paragraph	Option ↑
end of paragraph	Option ↓
beginning of document	Command ↑
end of document	Command ↓

Highlighting

To highlight,

• combine any of the motions from above with Shift.

Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Text Editing

Action	Keyboard Shortcut
switch the characters left and right of cursor	Control T
delete backwards	Control H
delete forwards	Control D
cut highlighted text	Control K
cut till end of paragraph	Control K (with nothing highlighted)
paste previously cut text	Control Y
start a new line but stay in the current one	Control O

These work in conjunction with the shortcuts using the Command and Option keys:

Action	Keyboard Shortcut
delete one character backward	Backspace
delete one character forward	Fn Backspace
delete one word backward	Option Backspace
delete one word forward	Fn Option Backspace
delete until the beginning of the line	Command Backspace
cut highlighted text	Command X
copy highlighted text	Command C
paste	Command V
paste without formatting	Command Option Shift V

Note the last shortcut in particular. Pasting just plain text without formatting will save you much anguish and time.

A keyboard shortcut for AI editing help: How to Use a Keyboard Shortcut for Mac AI Writing Tools

(How to use text movement and editing keyboard shortcuts on a Mac tested with macOS Sonoma 14.3–14.6 and Ventura 13.3; first published April 2023, last updated September 2024)