Basically, is there any way to trigger the native OS X spellcheck context menu using a keyboard shortcut. I know the command keys ⌘+: activates spellcheck, but what I'm trying to do is get the result of a right-click without taking my hands off the keyboard. Is there an OS X equivalent to emacs' flyspell-correct-word-before-point command.
MacOS – way to spellcheck the word under the cursor with a keyboard shortcut
keyboardmacosspellcheck
Related Solutions
I always have the same question but I didn't find the answer yet.
In Windows, when we use the keyboard short-cuts we mostly use the Menu key in Windows keyboard:
When this Menu key is pressed, Windows will assume that you right-clicked the highlighted/active element > then it will show you the context menu even if the mouse pointer is not pointing to the highlighted element.
So this feature seems to be missing in Mac OS. And whatever suggested solutions, even Enable Mouse Key it always require you to point/move your mouse pointer to element first, which is meaningless. If I need to use the keyboard short-cut to open the context menu on the highlighted item, why do I need again to move the mouse pointer to it also. Somehow this is not a short-cut!!
I don't know a single shortcut to select the word, but you can do it in two steps, by first moving the cursor to the start of the word, then select the word.
1) Move cursor to left of word:
⌥←
2) Select word to right of cursor:
⇧⌥→
Of course you could do a similar thing with moving to the right of the word with ⌥→ then selecting the word to the left of the cursor with ⇧⌥← if you prefer.
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Best Answer
If you're on Lion, you can turn on iOS-style spelling corrections in System Preferences under Language and Text. I don't always have luck noticing or reacting to these corrections while typing, but moving back over the misspelled word with your cursor will bring up the iOS-style popup and you can select the correct spelling with the down arrow and Return.
A similar question was asked on superuser, see Keyboard Shortcut to Right Click. To paraphrase that answer here:
You can also "Activate Mouse Keys", but I find that solution unsatisfying.