MacOS – OS X unwanted shortcut: ⌘⌘ converted to ⌘C

keyboardmacosshortcut

As the title says, whenever I repeat the ⌘ key it triggers a copy command (just as if I pressed ⌘C). I can even see the "Edit" menu entry blinking when I do that. This happens system-wide.

I checked OS X's shortcuts under System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, but there's nothing there. I also checked other apps, like BetterTouchTool, but it's not defined in any of them.

This started happening a couple of months ago and I'm going a bit crazy with this. Is there any way I can know which app is creating / assigning each shortcut? That could massively help narrowing it down.

Thank you!

Best Answer

You may get some luck if you download and install CheatSheet - it builds a list of shortcuts for the current application, so you may be able to track it down by working through your apps with that.

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MacOS – OS X keyboard shortcut precedence

I think the OS X Human Interface Guidelines are the place you're looking for. They state that there are Apple-reserved shortcuts (e.g. cmd ⌘+space) and also “expected behaviours” (e.g. cmd ⌘+c) one should respect.

While they don't explicitly state the priority, it suggests itself that the System always should have priority before the frontmost (active) and then background applications.

From my experience, you’re on the safe side with multiple modifier keys (i.e. cmd ⌘+ctrl+shift+…).

As an aside: regarding your specific example (assigning a shortcut to open a new terminal) there's also excellent apps for that, TotalTerminal (Terminal.app extension) and iTerm 2 (Terminal.app replacement) come to mind

Replace keyboard shortcut for ⌥ + d

Create a plain text file with this in it (in TextEdit, use Format > Make Plain Text):

{
    "~d" = ("insertText:", "ð");
}

Call it DefaultKeyBinding.dict (make sure to uncheck “When no extension is provided, use .txt”), and save it in ~/Library/KeyBindings/. (You can press Command ⌘+Shift ⇧+G and paste that path.)

The "~d" means Option-D, and the ("insertText:", "ð") means it will insert a ð character instead of ∂.

You will have to restart your applications in order for this setting to take effect.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – OS X keyboard shortcut precedence

Replace keyboard shortcut for ⌥ + d

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