I am enjoying OSX and the Macbook Pro, but I was initially finding it difficult to train myself out of familiar Windows keyboard shortcuts like Control-X to cut the clipboard and Alt-D for the location bar in Firefox.

Here I’ll describe the steps I took to add Windows/Linux compatible shortcuts for the clipboard and Firefox to OSX. I also describe how to make Emacs in Terminal.app work better.

To add the the shortcuts, go to “System Preferences : Keyboard and Mouse : Keyboard Shortcuts”

Clipboard shortcuts:
Click the “+” button. Enter “Cut” the menu title and press “Control X” in the keyboard shortcut field. Do the same for “Paste” (Control V) and “Copy” (Control C).

Firefox shortcuts:
Click the “+” button and select “Firefox” for the list of apps. Add a shortcut for “Open Location…” (Alt D) and “New Tab” (Control T).

At this point you can use either the Mac or the Windows keyboard shortcuts and have the right thing happen.

Advanced options: Emacs

If you happen to be an Emacs user, you need to do one additional thing to make sure these shortcuts don’t interfere with Emacs. For example, “Control-V” should paste in every application except terminal, since that would break the Emacs “scroll-down” function.

Once again, click the “+” button and select “Terminal” under application. Enter “Cut” the menu title and press “Command X” in the keyboard shortcut field. This will disable the mapping of Control X in the terminal.

You’ll also want to take these additional steps to ensure that Terminal sends keys through to Emacs:

Under “Terminal : Preferences : Settings : Keyboard”, check “Use Option as Meta key”. Under Keys, remap the Home, End, Page Up, and Page DOwn keys to send these strings to the terminal.

Home = \033[1~
Insert = \033[2~
Remove = \033[3~
End = \033[4~
PageUp = \033[5~
PageDown = \033[6~