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This article shows you how to Use iMac Without Mouse. At first, it might seem hard or even impossible to use your iMac without a mouse. But you can still use your iMac even if the mouse suddenly stops working. This article assumes that your mouse is working fine. The following hacks are, of course, easy and mostly involve using mouse.
But if the keyboard stops working, you won’t be able to use your iMac and should look for a replacement. So, without further ado, let’s get started. This is a short guide to help all the programmers out there who still have to take their hands off the mouse to do most, if not all, of their navigation.
How to Use iMac Without Mouse
Logging in
First, let’s start at the beginning. That is, you can use only the keyboard to log in to your computer. When you press the Power button to turn your computer on, the login screen will come up. If the text panel is already chosen, you can just type in your password and press the Enter key to log in.
But if you have more than one account, the text field won’t show up automatically. So, in this case, press the right arrow key to highlight your user avatar and hit enter to open the text field for it. The next step is to type in your password.
Setting Up
Before you start using the iMac without a mouse, you should go to the system preferences and turn on full keyboard control. If you do this, you’ll be able to use the Tab button, which is a very important key for getting around the iMac quickly.
The Tab button is used to highlight different parts of the window you’re in. Pressing this key over and over again makes the highlighted parts of the screen switch places. So, to turn on this function,
- Press Command + Space to access the Spotlight search.
- Type and enter keyboard.
- So, if the aforementioned option is disabled, press Control + fn + F7 on your keyboard to enable full keyboard controls.
- Once this is done, use the Tab key to highlight the Keyboard preferences tabs and navigate to the Shortcuts tab by using the arrow key.
Move the Cursor Without a Mouse
Modern computers have an option built in that lets you move the mouse cursor on the screen with the keyboard. So, if you want to use this feature on an iMac, you can enable the mouse keys.
- Press Command + Space to access the Spotlight search.
- Type and enter Pointer Control. You have to use/spam the Tab key to highlight and navigate to the appropriate section of your screen.
- Go to the Alternative Control Methods section.
- Highlight the Enable Mouse Keys option and use Spacebar to place a checkmark on it.
- Then, navigate to the Options and mark the Press the Option keys five times to toggle Mouse keys option.
- Select OK to save your changes.
Shut Down Using the Keyboard
You can shut down your iMac directly from the keyboard in a few different ways. To turn off your computer, you can press the Command, Option, Control, and Power keys at the same time.
If you are in the middle of a document, this key combination will let you know that the changes have not been saved and give you time to do so before the computer turns off. You can also shut down your iMac from the terminal by following the steps below.
- Press Command + Space to access the Spotlight search.
- Type and enter Terminal.
- Enter the following command:
- shutdown -h now
- Enter password if prompted.
Apple has a lot of features that will make it easier for you to use only your keyboard to move around on your desktop. So, here are some things to keep in mind.
You can use the Command and Spacebar keys together to open the Spotlight search. With this, you can open any program on your computer and go anywhere on your computer.
But you can’t get to the menu bar through Spotlight. You can try out different combinations of keys to get to the menu bar. To move the control to the menu bar, press Control + F2 or, in some cases, Control + fn + F2. Then, you can use the arrow keys to move around and Enter or Space to choose any option that looks interesting to you.