Some hotkeys not working for certain apps

keyboardshortcut

I'm trying to understand why select hotkeys will not work in certain apps. For example, Command+ will not work in WhatsApp to make text bigger, and CommandControlF will not work in Joplin to make it full screen.

My suspicion is that another application is hijacking this hotkey, but how do I verify this? How do I check which commands the computer is actually executing?

Best Answer

Nothing is being hijacked. To make an app full screen or to make text larger, it must be supported by the application. This holds true for not only shortcuts, but text substitution as well.

A quick search of the Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for the Full Screen shortcut says this:

Control-Command-F: Use the app in full screen, if supported by the app.

Related Solutions

Keyboard shortcuts for dynamic menu items (Keynote)

This doesn't solve the general case problem of how to assign a keyboard shortcut for any dynamic menu item, but it does solve the specific problem of having a keyboard shortcut to hide or display slides in Keynote.

We can work around the shortcut problem because Keynote is AppleScriptable.

Create a new service in Automator.

The service takes no input in Keynote.app.

The service has a single action: Do AppleScript. The script (in all its one-line beauty) is:

tell application "Keynote" to tell current slide of the front slideshow to set skipped to not skipped

Save the service as "ToggleSkipped".

Use the Keyboard Shortcuts tab within the Keyboard pane of System Preferences to bind the service to an unused keystroke.

MacOS – Karabiner Elements: Why is a series (or sequence/batch) of keys called in {…“to”: …} only executed every second time

I think your workaround perfectly demonstrates the reason: you are selecting "Element information" via the GUI, and the context menu may take a few milliseconds to be brought up. This isn't an issue with Karabiner specifically — if the E and return keycodes are sent instantaneously after right-clicking, the context menu may not be in focus yet, and they won't be directed appropriately.

In short, if you're making a GUI macro, you may need to wait for the GUI to respond.

As I see it, there are three possible solutions:

simply add a brief delay, as you've done,
use an alternate tool (e.g. Keyboard Maestro) which allows you to pause until a certain condition is filled, or
use an alternate method of activating the desired outcome, i.e. something which doesn't rely on the graphical user interface at the user level, such as AppleScript (though I don't know if such an option exists for this specific goal).