macOS Keyboard Shortcuts – Fixing Control-F2 Move Focus to Menu Bar Issue

keyboardmacosui

I don't want to use my trackpad too much due to a strain injury, hence I use the Control F2 "Move Focus to Menu Bar" a lot.

However this feature only works occasionally, it can work for hours and then suddenly stop working, sometimes I can fix in the Keyboard Shortcuts pref pane by unchecking and checking the "Move Focus to Menu Bar" checkbox, at other times it takes a restart of the system.

enter image description here

I'm a big Apple fan-boy, and I always marvel at the cool features in OSX, this is the first time I have a Windows-esque experience with the OSX UI 🙁

Best Answer

When you're sure you've got your Fn key settings the way you want them and it STILL doesn't work:

My solution:

  1. Go back into Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts pane.

  2. For the item "Move focus to the menu bar", assign a DIFFERENT function key, other than F2. (Something you're not using, like, say...^F9...or whatever.)

  3. Now use THAT key instead.

Sounds kind of nuts, I know. And it's annoying to use a different key. But I've found that ^F2 just won't consistently work after I've been using enough 3rd party programs, particularly if they're complex. Sometimes ^F3 will also fail, and that keyboard pane can start acting a little strange on its own to be honest. This does seem to work though.

coder

Related Question