MacOS – Possible to move the cursor word-by-word with Cmd+left/right instead of Alt+left/right

keyboardmacosui

I would like to use Cmd+←/→ instead of Alt+←/→ to move the cursor word by word in Mac OSX (A Cocoa thing I guess).

Is it possible to change that?

And by the same token, I would like to move the cursor to the beginning and end of the line by using Alt+←/→ instead of Cmd+←/→.

Can it be done?

Best Answer

One option would be to create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "@\UF702" = moveWordBackward:;
    "@\UF703" = moveWordForward:;
    "~\UF702" = moveToBeginningOfLine:;
    "~\UF703" = moveToEndOfLine:;
    "~$\UF702" = moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:;
    "~$\UF703" = moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:;
}

You can't change ⇧⌘← or ⇧⌘→ though. And it doesn't work in some text views or Xcode or Firefox.

Using KeyRemap4MacBook, you could add this to private.xml:

<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_COMMAND</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_COMMAND</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_SHIFT | VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_SHIFT | VK_COMMAND</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_SHIFT | VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_SHIFT | VK_COMMAND</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_COMMAND | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_COMMAND | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT</autogen>

It would make going back with ⌘← and changing tabs with ⇧⌘← stop working though.

See the source for the key code constants and predefined settings.

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