02-12-2007, 07:39 AM

I assume that for most people,
it would be:

command space - open Spotlight in the top right corner
command option space - open Spotlight window


But ever since I installed Tiger, for me, it's:
ctrl space - open Spotlight in the top right corner
ctrl option space - open Spotlight window

and as for the other shortcuts, it's:

command space - toggle between last two keyboard layouts/text input
command option space - toggle between ALL keyboard layouts/text input



But then I noticed that on Apple's page on keyboard shortcuts,
it said that it was in fact the "command" set of shortcuts that were for Spotlight.


I thought, "What? This can't be right..."
And I didn't think it would be a mistake, seeing as this is Apple's official page.
But actually, many other Mac help pages said the same thing.


So then I did some digging and found this page:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...05050215132822


So apparently, Apple actually decided to set the Spotlight shortcuts as existing keyboard shortcuts (those of switching text input).

But if a user is upgrading to Tiger and has the Input Menu displayed (such as myself),
the keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight is remapped to "ctrl space" and "ctrl option space".


...Is it just me, or this was a very bad decision on the part of Apple??

I mean, isn't it just plain confusing to have two arguably important keyboard shortcuts be either "text input" in certain situations, and "Spotlight search" in others?!


Thoughts? Opinions?

02-12-2007, 07:42 AM

I'm running 10.4.8 and Command + Space brings up the Spotlight dialog in the upper right corner. I use it all the time.

02-12-2007, 07:45 AM

@ToddG

I assume you only use one text input/keyboard layout/language?

02-12-2007, 07:58 AM

Correct; I thought I had two set up but just checked and only one is there. So sorry, disregard.

02-12-2007, 09:00 AM

if u go inside system pref -> spotlight
you can set the spotlight hot key to any thing u like.

02-12-2007, 10:45 AM

I dont have a hot-key set for SpotLight. I use Cmd+Space for Quicksilver. If i need spotlight, I click on it.

02-12-2007, 11:11 AM

I kinda wondered why Apple had done this as well. I'd guess however that if we set up a poll to query how many of us had more than one keyboard input set, we'd probably find a very large majority of people have only one, and are thus not affected by the duplicate shortcut.

I personally have four in my menu: U.S. (and am very familiar with the alt-shortcuts for the stuff on a U.K. keyboard, such as £ and €), ITABC (for Simplified Chinese via Pinyan), plus Hiragana and Katakana (which I almost never use and will probably remove).

I type in Pinyan seldomly enough that I've left the existing command-space shortcut in place for Spotlight, and just select ITABC from the menu when I need it.

After reading this thread however, now I know why command-space did not work on my Mini when I upgraded from Panther to Tiger, as I'd already enabled the international options prior to the upgrade. Never had occurred to me before!

02-12-2007, 11:23 AM

I used to use spotlight a bunch with Command + Space but rarely find myself needing it with QuickSilver using Ctrl + Space

02-12-2007, 07:14 PM

@the_New_guy

Yeah, I'm aware you can change the Spotlight hotkeys in Sys. Prefs.
but it's just, you'd think that the defaults are supposed to be consistent.

I mean, I'll probably get used to Ctrl Space for Spotlight
and one day, when I'll be using a public Mac or a friend's Mac,
suddenly, it doesn't work anymore!

Then after an instant, I'll remember, "Oh right! It's that Text Input thing!"

Eek.