Apple - Are there any global key combinations suitable or specifically reserved on OS X for user assignment?

Here are Apple's official OS X Human Interface Guidelines for Keyboard Shortcuts.

The document appears to be a current, authoritative, and complete guide to assigning keyboard shortcuts. It covers both the conceptual basis for using particular modifier keys, as well as the nitty-gritty of exactly which keys and which combinations are reserved system-wide, or likely to be reserved in the future.

Here's second Apple page showing a complete summary of existing keyboard shortcuts.


This is something I've been (and still am) tremendously bothered with, and have sinked a considerable amount of time to find something that both works as I'd like it to, and not interfere with the myriad of shortcuts already existing in OS X.

I was pretty partial to using the cmd+alt+ctrl+some key combo for a long time, and it works pretty well across the board. But, if you want something almost bulletproof, and seek to increase your geek cred all at one fell swoop, take a look at this blog post by Brett Terpstra, the guy behind nvAlt, among other things. It walks you through replacing your Caps Lock key with the combo cmd+alt+ctrl+shift, so you can do a 5-key combo (Caps Lock+some key) with 2 keys, which is awesome. This method gives you a whole keyboard worth of shortcuts not used by any app.

PS: Look at the comment section of the blog post to disable the esc functionality.


I have found that Cmd+Control+A-Z are usually available for your custom global shortcuts.

A notable exception is Cmd+Control+F, which makes apps full-screen.

I too would like to be able to access a complete list, however, which is how I arrived to this page.