I found this helpful hint in the Slashdot comment area this evening and I wanted to pass it along. I would like to be able to give credit to the creator, but I don’t know his or her name. Whoever you are, thanks.
The home and end keys behave differently in Mac OS X than they do Windows. In Windows, to go to the beginning of a line, you press home, and to go to the end, you press end. In OS X, you go to the beginning of the line by pressing command-left arrow, and the end of the line with command-right arrow.
To change the Mac’s home and end keys to behave like Windows, create a text file named ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (if the folder doesn’t exist, go ahead and create it) and add these lines:
/* Home/End keys like Windows */
{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* home */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* end */
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + home */
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + end */
}
Logout and login, and the home and end keys will work like Windows.
These changes appear to work in any OS X GUI app, but they don’t seem to apply to the Terminal. For those of you who are unaware, you can jump to the beginning of a Terminal line using control-a, and the end by pressing control-e.
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April 27th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
[...] In my continuing trend of hacking OSX to behave the way I want am accustomed to, I spent Monday night reclaiming my home and end keys. I knew I had seen this hack somewhere before, I just had to find it again. This comes courtesy of Aaron Adams, via The Tao of Mac: To change the Mac’s home and end keys to behave like Windows, create a text file named /Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (if the folder doesn’t exist, go ahead and create it) and add these lines: [...]
February 9th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
[...] user and the Mac’s way of dealing with Home and End really bugs you, here’s a tip from Aaron Adams - To change the Mac’s home and end keys to behave like Windows, create a text file named [...]
March 8th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
[...] Change the behavior of the home and end keys Un petit tutorial pour que les touches “Home” et “End” fontionnent normallement sur mon Mac. (tags: documentation keyboard tutorial usability macosx) [...]
March 9th, 2007 at 2:47 am
windows user: where do i store the file “/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict” i create?
March 9th, 2007 at 10:49 am
The path “/Library/KeyBindings” means, the Library folder at the root of your drive (Macintosh HD) and a folder under that named KeyBindings. If KeyBindings does not exist, go ahead and create it.