Advertisement

News

Time-Saving Tips: The Most Used Keyboard Shortcuts for iPad and How to Create Your Own

Productivity in the form of keys

Time-Saving Tips: The Most Used Keyboard Shortcuts for iPad and How to Create Your Own
David Bernal Raspall

David Bernal Raspall

  • Updated:

One of the fastest and most efficient ways to interact with our devices is to use keyboard shortcuts. We may have to learn them at first instead of tapping or clicking on buttons, but as soon as we get used to them we will be much more agile.

Apple Books DOWNLOAD

Almost the same shortcuts as in Mac, but with some differences

Whether we use a Smart Folio Keyboard or a Magic Keyboard iPadOS offers a multitude of keyboard shortcuts with which to interact with the system and perform certain actions. The vast majority of them are the same as on our Mac, but there are some interesting changes and also shortcuts exclusive to the iPad. Here some of the most common shortcuts to move around the system:

  • Command + H: Go to the home screen.
  • Command + Spacebar: Show or hide the search field.
  • Command + Tab: Go to the most recently used application.
  • Command + Shift + 3: Take a screenshot.
  • Command + Shift + 4: Take a screenshot and immediately open Markup to view or edit it.
  • Command + Option + D: Show or hide the Dock.

System applications also have several keyboard shortcuts that we can use. We can see all the shortcuts for an app by simply holding down the Command key on our keyboard. Let’s look at some common key combinations:

In the Notes app:

  • Command + B: Bold.
  • Command + I: Italic.
  • Command + U: Underline.
  • Command + Shift + H: Title.
  • Command + N: New note.
  • Command + Enter: Finish editing.

In the Mail application:

  • Command + R: Reply.
  • Command + Shift + R: Reply to all.
  • Command + Shift + F: Forward.
  • Command + Option + F: Search mailbox.
  • Command + Up arrow: View previous mail.
  • Command + Down Arrow: View the next email.

In the Calendar:

  • Command + 1: Go to the day view.
  • Command + 2: Go to week view.
  • Command + 3: Go to month view.
  • Command + 4: Go to year view.
  • Command + T: Show today’s day.
  • Command + R: Reload calendars.

Customization and “esc” key, a couple of tricks for our iPad

In iPadOS we can customize our own commands to go a little further than the combinations we have just seen. There is also a most interesting, and little known, resource to press “esc”. Since the keyboard does not have an “esc” we can achieve the same function with Command + . (period).

As for customization with which we can define new keyboard shortcuts to perform various actions, access to its configuration is as follows:

  1. We open the Settings app on our iPad.
  2. Go to Accessibility.
  3. Tap on Keyboards.
  4. Click on Full keyboard access.
  5. Activate Full keyboard access.
  6. Tap on Commands.
  7. We choose the action that we want to carry out, here we will find all the shortcuts of the app shortcuts.
  8. Press the keys you want to use for the shortcut.
  9. Press OK.

It’s that easy. It is clear that touching the screen (and recording it) is tremendously intuitive when performing actions such as using AirDrop and we do not need to memorize any key, but the truth is that, once accustomed, pressing a couple of them to perform something can be even more comfortable and, above all, much faster.

Apple Books DOWNLOAD

Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.

David Bernal Raspall

David Bernal Raspall

Architect | Founder of hanaringo.com | Apple Technologies Trainer | Writer at Softonic and iDoo_tech, formerly at Applesfera

Latest from David Bernal Raspall

Editorial Guidelines