What Do The F1, F2, F3, Through F12 Keys Do On Mac Keyboards? If you’re sat in front of your Mac now, take a look down at your keyboard. Sure, it has all of the characters you’d expect from a keyboard, but there are some keys along the top of the keyboard that might not be familiar to you. These are called function keys and all have Fx written on them, where x x is replaced with a number, like F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9, F10, F11, F12. So what do the the F keys on a Mac do?
Glancing at the F keys on a Mac keyboard, you’ll see an icon if you look above the function key number, and that icon shows what else the key can do. And with 12 keys to choose from, they can do quite a bit. Additionally, standard function keys can be used within different apps in different ways, so be sure to check the keyboard shortcut options for your favorite apps to see if there are any that you should be making use of. Below is a list of the functions available for all of the Mac function keys. They should all be present and correct if you’re using an Apple keyboard on almost any modern Mac, except for any Mac with a Touch Bar anyway which uses a little screen instead of the F keys. Of course some much older Macs may have different functions assigned to the F keys too, so we’re assuming you’re on modern hardware. What the F Keys Do on Mac Keyboards These are the primary defaults of what function keys do on an Apple keyboard when connected to a Mac: F1: Decrease display brightness F2: Increase display brightness F3: Open Mission Control F4: Open Launchpad F5: Decrease keyboard brightness (On compatible notebooks only) F6: Increase keyboard brightness (On compatible notebooks only) F7: Skip back (Audio) F8: Pause / Play (Audio) F9: Skip forward (Audio) F10: Mute F11: Volume down F12: Volume Up Pressing a function key will invoke its secondary function by default. To use the Fx keys as standard function keys, press and hold the Fn button and then press the required function key. If you’re using a non-Apple keyboard that doesn’t have an Fn key, try pressing and holding the Control key instead. Changing Function Key Behavior on Mac You can change the default behavior of the function keys on Mac too, however. This basically inverts their function away from defaulting to things like brightness and audio controls to standard F keys. 1. Open System Preferences from the Apple menu 2. Click “Keyboard” from system preferences 3. Select “Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” to make the change. If you make this change, you’ll need to press down the “FN” key on the keyboard and then press the F1, F2, F3, etc keys to perform the action that is on the keys icon (for example, changing brightness, or muting system volume). Some users on older Macs in particular prefer this, as we covered previously some time ago. Similarly, if you’re using a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, press and hold the Fn key to see the F1 through F12 keys and then tap the screen to use them. If the Mac has a Touch Bar but you’d like to always see the function keys, you can actually disable the Touch Bar on MacBook Pro so that the Touch Bar remains the same all of the time, you can set it to either show an F key row or the actions row, whatever you prefer. If you’re new to the Mac you may not know about some of the other cool tricks you can do with the Fn key, like move “Home” and “End.” If your keyboard isn’t working properly you can also enable a software-based virtual keyboard, too, but often cleaning the Mac keyboard can improve key press issues. This obviously is aimed at Mac keyboards either from Apple or third parties, but if you’re using a third party PC keyboard and you have a different set of F keys (or even none at all), you can consult your keyboard’s manufacturer for more information about the function row. There are a ton of other keyboard shortcuts, like navigating text amongst many others that are well worth learning if you spend a lot of time typing on a Mac as well. They’ll completely change your game once you master the ones that you use most. Do you use the function keys often? Have you changed the behavior of any of the F keys for any other purpose? Let us know your experiences and thoughts in the comments. Original Article at: http://osxdaily.com/2020/02/11/what-do-f1-f12-f-keys-do-mac-keyboard/ -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/macvisionaries/000001d5e462%2457f1ccd0%2407d56670%24%40edu.
