Windows – How to add the Alt+Backspace macOS typing functionality to Windows

I just figured this out, using the great research available here: http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=114785

Note that I'm using 2 different definitions of "dictionary" in the explanation below:

The trick is to add a value to the AppleSymbolicHotKeys dictionary in com.apple.symbolichotkeys

Within this dictionary, you want to add a new dictionary for key 70 (that's word at point dictionary lookup) with enabled = NO. Make sure that 'enabled' is a boolean.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to distill it to a single 'defaults write...' invocation. It would be something like this:

defaults write com.apple.symbolichotkeys AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 70 "{enabled=NO;}"

but I can't figure out how to specify that 'enabled' should be boolean. As written, this makes it a string, which just doesn't work to disable the keystroke. You can run this command, and then edit the plist and switch it to boolean.. that may be easier than editing the file directly.

This will disable the dictionary keystroke. You can use the information from the link above to rebind dictionary to a different key if you prefer.

⌥⌫ (option-delete) deletes a word backward and ⌥⌦ (option-forward delete) a word forward in most text views.

M-delete deletes a word backward and M-d a word forward by default in readline. You can duplicate the OS X shortcuts by using option as a meta key and assinging ⌥⌦ to \033d.

You can also define new shortcuts by creating ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and saving a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict.

{
    "~z" = (selectParagraph:, delete:);
    "~u" = (moveToBeginningOfParagraphAndModifySelection:, cut:);
    "~k" = (moveToEndOfParagraphAndModifySelection:, cut:);
    "@\UF728" = deleteToEndOfLine:;
}