After purchasing a new computer (Mac Mini w/Lion) and migrating my settings from old one (Macbook Pro w/Snow Leopard), the system shortcuts for beginning-of-line and end-of-line text navigation commands (Cmd-left/right arrow) just don't work anymore, anywhere.
Curiously, this happens only in a single user account, and in other accounts on the same computer it's OK. Other shortcuts with the Command key (like Cmd-up) also work just fine.
I have browsed through the keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences> Keyboard. I also have KeyRemap4Macbook installed and browsed through its settings, to no avail. There is no Keybindings folder in my ~/Library, either.
Anybody have any idea how to even start debugging this problem?
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1See also Command+right/left stopped working. (It's not an exact duplicate since the problem was that the shortcuts stopped working only occasionally.)Lri– Lri2012年03月24日 09:22:09 +00:00Commented Mar 24, 2012 at 9:22
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1Thanks for the link to that question! It made me browse through the system shortcuts again, and lo and behold - Cmd+Left & Cmd+Right were indeed in plain sight as shortcuts for "Move Left a Space" and "Move Right a Space" - I didn't even look there before because I did not use Spaces at all in Snow Leo, and so I assume these shortcuts were inactive. Now the upgrade to Lion and Mission Control activated them, but I still had only one space so they did nothing.ttarchala– ttarchala2012年03月24日 18:34:46 +00:00Commented Mar 24, 2012 at 18:34
2 Answers 2
I remember having the same problem in some apps after upgrading to Lion. A reboot fixed it for me.
Workaround: use Ctrl+A (instead of ⌘+←) to move the cursor to the beginning of the line and Ctrl+E to move the cursor to the end of the line (instead of ⌘+→). This works in all Cocoa-based applications.
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Thanks for your answer, I know of the workaround but of course it would be nice to be able to go back to the shortcuts that are in my muscle memory after so many years...ttarchala– ttarchala2012年03月23日 13:48:43 +00:00Commented Mar 23, 2012 at 13:48
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Did you try a reboot? Did you use Software Update until you’re on the latest version (10.7.3)?Mathias Bynens– Mathias Bynens2012年03月23日 13:55:45 +00:00Commented Mar 23, 2012 at 13:55
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Yes, absolutely, I have restarted a couple of times already since first noticing this symptom. I'm also upgraded to the latest Lion available, 10.7.3.ttarchala– ttarchala2012年03月23日 16:02:42 +00:00Commented Mar 23, 2012 at 16:02
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Usually the ⌘ key is represented as @ in dictionary files. It might help running
grep -I "@" ~/Library/Preferences/*and you might find some settings that are not listed in the Keyboard Preferences. The -I option in the command tells it to ignore binary files, in case you are not familiar with this.ismail– ismail2012年03月23日 16:52:22 +00:00Commented Mar 23, 2012 at 16:52 -
Note: ⌃A and ⌃E are not equivalent to ⌘← and ⌘→. The former go to the beginning/end of the whole line (paragraph), while the latter take word-wrapping into account in Cocoa text fields.jtbandes– jtbandes2012年03月24日 20:55:10 +00:00Commented Mar 24, 2012 at 20:55
Thanks to the commenter Lri for pointing to this question: Command+right/left stopped working! It made me browse through the system shortcuts again, and lo and behold - Cmd+Left & Cmd+Right were indeed in plain sight as shortcuts for "Move Left a Space" and "Move Right a Space" - I didn't even look there before because I did not use Spaces at all in Snow Leo, and so I assumed these shortcuts were inactive. Now the upgrade to Lion and Mission Control activated them, but I still had only one space so they did nothing.
So it was enough to actually redefine them to something else to regain the beginning/end-of-line functionality.
Sorry everyone for misleading with the wrong information (turns out I did not actually browse through all possible shortcuts...)