MacOS – How to activate buttons with just the keyboard

I did a little bit of searching and found this page on OSX accessibility.

They might be called "Utility Windows".

• Control + F6 Moves focus to the first (or next) utility window
• Control + Shift + F6 Moves focus to the first (or previous) utility window

Once inside, Tab and Shift tab can be used to navigate.

Interestingly, these shortcut keys worked with the following dialog boxes

• Finder - View Options
• TextEdit - Fonts

But did not work with these

• TextEdit - Special Characters
• OmniFocus - Inspector

Using the tab key between save and cancel buttons works for OS X too. You only have to enable it:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Go To Keyboard
3. Go to the tab Keyboard Short
4. On the bottom of the window, set the radio button to "All controls":

From now on, when you see a OK/Cancel window the OK button is blue and can be pressed using the return key, and the cancel button has a outline which can be pressed using the space bar:

But the real trick is: You are now able to press the tab key to move the outline to another button and hit the space bar to press the highlighted button.