Dialog Button. The Most Basic Mac Usability

After several times going further to the tweaking process, often we forgot the very basic usability that we will need in using our Mac, which is well-known yet often ignored, i.e. choosing dialog button with keyboard.

Setting needs to be done are very minor comparing to major advantages and boost in productivity that will be gained. Let's follow the instructions on how to use keyboard to select dialog box button.

Enabling Full Keyboard Access

Full keyboard access is the main role for today. With full keyboard access, we can use our tab key to traverse through dialog buttons, that will give us blue highlight as indicator. Here is how to set it.

1. Open System Preferences
2. Go to Keyboard & Mouse and under Keyboard Shortcuts section
3. Quickly glance at the bottom of the pane and select radio button All controls
4. For the whole step, actually can be replaced by pressing Control-Fn-F7

Shown Above. Full Keyboard Access Set to All Controls

Now the option to navigate through your dialog buttons has been enabled.

Navigating through Dialog Buttons

Has been said earlier, you can use tab key to move around button's indicator. There are two types of indicators can be seen on dialog box, one button is highlighted and one button is filled with blue color (provided that you use default Leopard theme).

Shown Above. Dialog Box Appeared Upon Quitting Safari

• spacebar for highlighted button
• enter for filled button
• escape for doing nothing and closing dialog box

Note. If you can't see the button in blue highlight, you should try to set full keyboard access again