"Activate Spaces" shortcut dead

The keyboard shortcut (F8) for activating Spaces has died on me. I've tried restarting; restoring the defaults; changing to another shortcut--whatever is supposed to activate Spaces just produces an alert sound. Setting a screen corner to Spaces still works--it's just the shortcut that's gone. Cause? Solution? Thanks!

I have Spaces on cmd-F3. I have to chord in the fn key also, but it works.
But the keyboard shortcuts on the Expose & Spaces prefpane do not work: "To switch between spaces" using the modified arrow keys just doesn't do anything! However, under the Keyboard prefpane, I can set those shortcuts and it will work. (Disabling the individual shortcuts, or the Spaces group, in the Keyboard prefpane has no effect on the Expose & Spaces prefpane functionality.)
So it would appear that Spaces keyboard shortcuts are quite messed up.

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Spaces shortcut key still works in Lion

While I was still running Snow Leopard, I had set F5 to activate Spaces. Even though F5 doesn't appear to be listed in the Keyboard Shortcuts preferences, it still seems to work. Now that I've upgraded to Lion, strangely the key still seems to work, but I can't get to the Spaces pref pane since it's been replaced by Mission Control. Not a major problem, but ideally I'd like to assing Launchpad to F5, doing so doesn't work while the old Spaces shortcut key holds sway.
I got it to stop working once I set them all of the categories to defaults, but after a reboot it still seems to be set to F5.

com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist also contains these settings:
Control+right and control+left moves from desktop to desktop
Control+1, Control+2, and so forth, go to the specified desktop
Option+Command+D shows and hides the dock
Control-Up shows Mission Control
F12 (or Fn F12) shows the dashboard
If any of those work, it's mystery. Maybe the file is invisible. Not likely. It can't be a bug in Lion, or lots and lots of people would have this problem. It can't be a corrupt installation file, because the problem is too specific. It could be that reinstallation or recovery would fix it. You have an Apple Store in München, so you could ask a Genius there. I think that is the best bet.
This is a system file. If it doesn't exist at log in, Lion creates it. It should not be missing. It occurs to me just now that the Preferences folder might have the wrong permissions and that could prevent Lion from creating the file. Your user account should own the Permissions folder and have read and write privileges. The everyone group should have no access. There should not be any other entries in the name column beyond those two.
Don't apply to enclosed items just yet. The plist files have the same permissions, but the lockfiles have an additional entry granting Wheel read-only access.

How to activate spaces

I can't activate Spaces. In the Spaces Preferences Panel, it says to press F8, but in my computer, F8 makes the monitor brighter, it doesn't activate spaces.
How can I set F8, or any other keyboard shortcut, to activate Spaces??
thanks!!
EDIT - never mind! I fixed it in system preferences, thanks

Hi, not on 10.5.8 at the moment, but check System Preferences>Expose & Spaces>Spaces Tab, see if Enable Spaces is checked, & at the bottom set the keys youd like to use.
b

Activate Keyboard shortcut set

Hi,
is there a way to activate a keyboard shortcut set on startup of InDesign. Maybe with a startup script.
Currently the user has to activate the shortcut set manually.
Thanks
Stefan

Yes, it does remember the shortcut keyset. We want to deploy a new shortcut set for all our InDesign users by copying the shortcut set into the users workspace.
But the user still has to activate it himself. We are looking for a workaround for that.
Thanks Stefan

I have Windows 7 and Firefox 3.6.1, when I am typing text such as email when I hit the shift key and certain letters it activates the shortcut keys and is very annoying how do I get this to stop?

This has happened multiple times. While typing email and also in forums. This is a new computer with Windows 7 so not sure if problem is something in Windows or with Firefox. Sometimes when I hit Shift and t a new tab will open, or shift and w will cause a pop up to come asking if I want to navigate away from this window. I have had other things pop up as well but not sure what they were or what keys I hit that caused them to show up. It tends to happen as I am typing faster. But when this happens, such as the shift t thing, I will close the tab and go back to what I was typing. Watching carefully that i am not hitting the ctrl key I hit shift t and the new tab will pop up again. The only way to get this to stop is to hit the esc key then I am able to to type fine again until it starts again. Once I was typing and my entire text highlighted and disappeared and I lost everything, so yes it can be extremely annoying. Hopefully someone can help me to solve this problem.

Yes, I have rebooted the computer several times. Logged off for the night and login this morning.
It still is happening.
It happens when I type a message in yahoo; when I login to yahoo, both trading platforms and several other applications.
After a while it stops - don't know if there is a key I strike that deactivates what every it is that is making the the keys perform the shortcut function. Sometimes by hitting ESC more than 4 times but less than 10 seems to stop it (or so it appears as the next time I type a msg in Yahoo mail the keys don't activate the toolbar "edit" function. Sometimes striking the backspace key over and over again when there is nothing to delete appears to stop it from happening.
Anymore suggestions? Greatly appreciated. Tired of retyping 3 or more times. Have gotten to the point where I type in word or notepad and paste my username and password into the appropriate areas or into the message area.
Will capture image next time.

How can I disable mac pro OSX 'spaces' shortcut keys? (i.e. CTL, Right Arrow)

How can I disable mac pro shortcut keys: CTL right arrow, CTL left arrow, CTL up arrow, CTL down arrow? Currently, they take me from one space to another. (OSX 10.6) Goal is to use these shortcuts for text editing.

Hi, Simon.
You can instruct iTunes and iPhoto to save their respective libraries to a different disk, e.g. your second hard drive. You can also move existing libraries for these apps to a drive other than your startup disk.
See the links concerning moving these libraries cited in the "More ways to save space if you have a spare partition or second hard drive" section of my "Freeing Space on your Mac OS X startup disk" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Is it possible to disable opt+cmd+space shortcut ?

opt+cmd+space is very close to opt+cmd+m which is a shortcut I use often and everytime it just miss it the window animates down to minimised which is infuriating. Can I kill this "feature"?
Thanks
AC

You mean the "Show Spotlight window" cmd-opt-space key sequence? If so, open your keyboard system preferences, keyboard shortcuts, select spotlight in the left panel, and double click the cmd-opt-space sequence there to allow you to select it and replace it with a different key sequence or no keys at all.

Illustrator CS3 En, Em, Thin space shortcut

I am looking for keyboard shortcut for en, em, thin space in Illustrator CS3.
I could find the way to apply en and em dashes by using smart punctuation.
I tried to find the answer in Illustrator help option, but could not find it..
Please let me know about it.

I came by this thread while searching for this feature. Since this is still not present in Illustrator CC (which is unbelievable), I thought I might share another way to do this if you’re on Mac OS X. It requires some setting up, but I use this all the time:
Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard.
Make sure “show keyboard & character viewer” is turned on.
In your status bar on the top right, click on character viewer.
In the Characters panel, search for “thin”.
Under “Unicode-name” select the first “invisible” character.
Make sure it is says “THIN SPACE” in the right panel.
Double click it to insert it somewhere.
For extra convenience, you can add the thin space character to your favourites.
Hope that helps anyone looking for the same thing

Backspace, enter and space shortcuts don't work.

Backspace doesn't work for back; space doesn't work for page down; return doesn't work for SnapBack. I've no idea what caused this problem.

?!
Problem gone.

HT1624 what if I don't have the view option in the System preferences, how do I activate Spaces?

...

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
When you open , System Preferences, Personal, is there an Exposé & Spaces listed?
If so, you need to click the blue Spaces button near the top to set preferences, including enabling Spaces and, showing it in the top menu bar if desired. Once enabled, F8 is the default key to enable Spaces, as shown below.

How to activate Ctrl+[ shortcut

On my keyboard on windows7 I want to rotate images on Bridge and I must Ctrl+[ or Ctrl+] to rotate the images.
On my keyboard (the ] symbol only is possible to press by clicking also AltGr.
So, I can't rotate onlçy with Ctrl+[ to rotate. What am I missing?

That's it!
On a portugusese keyboard:
Ctrl + ' to rotate left
Ctrl + « to rotate right

Shortcuts for Spaces keeps revert to default settings without cause

I have a Powerbook G4 that's running Leopard 10.5.8. It has plenty of free space on the hard drive (approx 35%).
Whenever I start up my Powerbook or wake it from sleeping, the shortcut keys to switch between Spaces are no longer selected. It retains the designation I gave for which Space each application is assigned to, but the shortcut keys are for some reason reverted to where nothing is selected. Any suggestions??? This is VERY annoying.
Thanks so much for all your help

delete the file home directory/library/preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist and log out/in. then set spaces shortcuts again and see if they stick from now on.

Using iCal Keyboard Shortcuts when Spaces is Enabled

Hi everyone!
I'm trying to use the command-right arrow and command-left arrow to quickly move between months on iCal, but it keeps activating spaces and sending me to an empty space on my desktop.
Any ideas to use the iCal shortcuts without disabling Spaces?
Thanks!
- Jena

Hi Jena,
You can change the Spaces shortcuts. Go to *System Preferences* > *Exposé & Spaces*, select the Spaces tab and change the *'To switch between spaces:'* option there. You can change it to use the Control or Option key instead of the Command key.
Best wishes
John M

Spaces can no longer be activated by a mouse button

I used to have Spaces activated by mouse button 4. This no longer works, even though it is still configured as such.
I know that SL is detecting my mouse properly, because button 4 works for other things. For example, I can assign mouse button 4 to "show desktop", and this works. So I believe it is a Spaces issue, not a mouse driver issue.
I have also tried assigning other mouse buttons (3, 5) to activate spaces, and it still does not work.
I can activate spaces using my keyboard or clicking on the dock icon.

Similar problem. I had "Activate Spaces" set to ^0. It stopped working after 10.6.1 update and no matter what I set it to, or whether or not the checkbox under Keyboard Shortcuts is on or off it will not work. Error sound (Ping) and, if in a finder window, selects the first item in the window. I know the key is getting through without getting caught by the right handler.
Is there a way (Terminal? Xcode?) to dig to the definition and see why ^1 will take me to space 1, etc. but only the main "Activate" won't?

Premiere vs. OS X Spaces

I have my main PP CS5.5 Workspace set up with multiple windows (to span multiple displays, although this bug exists with multiple windows on a single display as well). The workspace is great, but when used in conjunction with Spaces, PP blithely moves my 2nd window to whichever Space I switch to, so my UI is unceremoniously split between two Spaces. To get everything back in the same Space, I have to click in the 2nd window and switch back to the original space. Pain.
The main window (the one with the project path/filename in the titlebar) is not affected, but any other PP windows will all move over to the wrong space. I minimally reproduced this with an empty main window (not even Options, Timeline, or Tools--completely blank), and 2nd window with only an Options or Tools panel.
I can reproduce the problem without the 2nd display (two windows on primary display). This occurred in CS5 as well, but I didn't try to troubleshoot then.
The same problem occurs in AE.
No other app I have behaves like this with modal windows, including other CS5.5 apps (Illustrator, Ps, ID, DW, Flash Pro).
I have tried (or otherwise ruled out):
Keeping my entire UI in one window that spans my displays -- the displays are offset and have completely different geometries.
Setting Premiere Pro to always open in a specific space in the Spaces Application Assignments. This did not help.
Turfing preferences -- I also effectively did this when I reinstalled the OS on a new boot drive. No difference in either case.
The only semi-practical workaround I've found is to only switch Spaces with keyboard shortcuts. This problem only seems to occur when activating the Spaces overview (default F8).
My system is a 2010 12-core Mac Pro (10.6.8). All CS5.5 software is up to date.
Any ideas on how to fix or troubleshoot further?

Bug report submitted, but in the meantime, I came up with a more reasonable (although not simple) workaround. I wrote some AppleScript to switch to Finder if PP or AE currently have focus, before activating Spaces. Here's the code, for anyone running into this issue:
Save the following AppleScript as a .scpt (compiled script). Assumes you have F8 bound to activate Spaces:
-- Activate Finder before activating Spaces if an
-- ill-behaved application currently has focus
-- By coyqueue on Adobe forums, July31/11
-- Return true if an offending application currently has focus
on offenderHasFocus()
    tell application "System Events"
        set fr to (get name of processes whose frontmost is true) as text
    end tell
    fr contains "After Effects" or fr contains "Premiere Pro"
end offenderHasFocus
if (my offenderHasFocus()) then
    tell application "Finder" to activate
    repeat while (my offenderHasFocus())
        # Uncomment if busy-wait interferes with background apps:
        #delay 0.1
    end repeat
end if
tell application "System Events" to key code 100 -- F8
To bind the above script to the mouse button, I went with USB Overdrive, and set up an AppleScript action for mouse button 4:
run script (POSIX file "/path/to/spaces.scpt")
NB: Spaces preference "When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application" should be turned OFF to avoid zooming to any space that happens to have an open Finder window.

"Activate Spaces" shortcut dead

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