How to view all keyboard shortcuts for an app on macOS

Keyboard shortcuts in an app make it easy to use. Many apps work perfectly without them but wherever they’re available, they’re welcome. If an app developer makes it so that users can customize the shortcut and set them to whatever they want, it’s all the better. That said, for more complex apps like Photoshop or the Office Productivity suite, custom shortcuts are not possible. More importantly, learning them all isn’t easy. Button Shortcuts is a free menu bar app that can list any and all keyboard shortcuts for an app. All you have to do is tap the Command key twice.

View keyboard shortcuts for an app

Download Button Shortcuts from the Mac App Store. It will run in the menu bar and on first launch, the app will guide you through its features.

Once you’ve gone through the guide, switch to whichever app it is you want to use. When you need to use a keyboard shortcut but cannot remember what it is, tap the Command key twice. Button Shortcuts will open a little menu where you can browser all the available keyboard shortcuts for an app.

Button Shortcuts is basically a learning tool and as you use keyboard shortcuts in a particular app more and more, you will eventually start to remember them. When that happens, having that particular keyboard shortcut appear in the list might end up being counter-productive which is why you can send it to the bottom of the list. To do so, click the green little check mark next to in the list.

If there’s a particular shortcut that you always have difficulty remembering, you can favorite it. Doing so will push it to the top of the list in the menu making it much easier to find. There’s also a helpful search bar within the app’s window that you can use to search for a keyboard shortcut.

If you later begin to forget a shortcut, you can click the green check mark button next to it and it will be added back to the list. Likewise, once you’ve learned a shortcut that you favorited, you can click the green check mark under it and have it sent to the bottom

Any time you have a new feature rich app that you have to get used to, this app is going to come in handy. It doesn’t have any settings for you to manage given it’s a pretty straight forward app.

If you’re learning a new app, you might be able learn its keyboard shortcuts faster if they’re visualized on your screen each time you use them.