How do I open the mac context menu from the keyboard?

Question

When I make a spelling error in a document, Lion gives me the option to correct the error by right-clicking (or ctrl-clicking, two-finger tapping, etc) on the misspelled word and bringing up the context menu.

How can I open this menu from the keyboard?

Answer 1

Close to what you've asked, is to enable spelling auto-correction via:

and then stay with your cursor at the end of a mispelled word, so you'll get an iOS style correction-suggestion:

then with down-arrow and left/right-arrows you can choose the correct word.

Answer 2

If you have "correct spelling automatically" checked and it doesn't seem to be working, it might be because you're trying it in an unsupported application. E.g., I can use the feature in TextEdit and Pages but not, e.g., FireFox or SublimeText 2 (two of my most used apps).

Tho I've spent way too much time looking, I haven't found any way of getting the suggested spellings from the context menu with the keys alone. The best option I've found so far is to use my thumb on the track pad to position the mouse and then hold ctl and tap (again with the thumb). It takes a bit longer because of the need for positioning, but at least I can keep my fingers on the home row.

I find it awkward to reach the ctl button, so I've used KeyRemap4MacBook (which is generally awesome and free) to customize the layout to make caps lock be ctl. KeyRemap will also let you assign ctl + click to button combinations, so you don't have to tap/click.

Answer 3

You can use Better Touch tool to set up any tap/swipe/click/key combination to the right click.

Answer 4

If you use TextMate, option-F2 shows a context menu by default.

You can change the shortcut by copying /Applications/TextMate.app/Contents/Resources/KeyBindings.dict to ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/.

The showContextMenu: method doesn't seem to work in other applications.