Macs and PCs have offered shortcuts (AKA hotkeys) to help users execute various functions. If you’ve ever wondered where the heck they come from, WSJ’s Dalvin Brown tracked down a legend in the keyboard shortcut game to get the scoop.
The 1st keyboard shortcuts
Control-Alt-Delete was created by David Bradley in the early 1980s
- It became a hit among IBM employees and eventually got programmed into the company’s original PC
- One of the first keyboard shortcuts was created at Xerox in the 1970s and included cut, copy, paste
Beyond Control-Alt-Delete
The challenge for engineers is threefold: Make shortcuts easy to remember, Ensure they make sense with existing keyboards, and Develop combinations that don’t trigger other shortcuts.
- Shortcuts that are used more often tend to include simpler key combinations (e.g., copy and paste).
- Less frequent shortcuts include more keys, such as force quitting an app.
Modern apps are ushering in a new era of shortcuts
Companies like Notion, Superhuman, and Figma have created their own shortcuts to help users save time by ditching the mouse
- Use The Keyboard lists shortcuts from a range of popular apps and websites
- Both Mac OS and Windows allow users to create shortcuts
