Does Notification Center have keyboard shortcuts?

Question

Are there any keyboard shortcuts for controlling Notification Center on OS X Mountain Lion? Of particular interest is a shortcut equivalent of the Click to Tweet button that appears at the top of Notification Center (when the requisite option is selected in the Notifications settings pane), but if it happens to have other shortcuts (either predefined, or definable in System Preferences - I couldn't see any) those would be useful as well.

Answer 1

There is a configurable keyboard shortcut to open Notification Center:

Other than that, there seems to be no way to configure any keyboard shortcuts. The closest I could get is discovering that you can set Notification Center as the action for a hot corner. If you wanted to do this when a key is pressed, you can try combining this with AppleScript (like in this post).

Answer 2

The proper answer to this question is "No." But that's not a very satisfying answer. So if you're determined to have keyboard shortcuts for Click to Tweet in Notification Center, this is what you can do:

Warning: this is a complete and utter hack, but it seems you can (for now; this might break easily) trigger the Tweet button through a very delicate use of UI scripting.

• Create an Automator service.

• Give it a single action: Run AppleScript

• Here's the script:

  tell application "System Events"
      tell process "Notification Center"
          click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1
          click button 1 of UI element 1 of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of window "window"
          keystroke "Whatever text you want as your default tweet"
      end tell
  end tell
  

• Save the service (obviously modify it from my example), assign it a keystroke in System Preferences, and voila: you've got a keyboard shortcut… until Notification Center gets rearranged and button 1 of UI element 1 of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of window "window" is no longer the Tweet button.

If this looks convoluted, that's because it is. If this isn't something you want to use, I don't blame you, and you can fall back on the answer of "no, there aren't keyboard shortcuts."

Answer 3

While it doesn't work for "click to Tweet", there are indeed three keyboard shortcuts that work with Notification Center. They are ↑, ↓, and return. Combined with the ability to assign a keyboard shortcut to open Message Center, normal messages can be responded to using the keyboard alone. The Share button and the Mute switch do not seem to respond to these inputs, however.

Answer 4

Here's what I do:

• I have a shortcut set to open Notification Centre. This is mapped to F13, as described in other answers.

• I also have the tab key enabled to move keyboard focus between 'all controls':

  1. Press F13 to open NC.
  2. Press the tab key twice until 'click to tweet' is highlighted in blue:
  3. Press the spacebar.
  4. Type my tweet (I haven't found a way to add location without clicking).
  5. CMD+Shift+D to send.

Answer 5

Here's an alternate:

display dialog "Tweet?" default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
set mytweet to text returned of result

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Notification Center"
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1
        click button 1 of UI element 1 of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of window "window"
        keystroke mytweet
        repeat 3 times
            keystroke tab using {control down}
        end repeat
        keystroke space
    end tell
end tell

Answer 6

If you are using a trackpad, there is also a new gesture to show/hide the notification center: swipe with two fingers from the right border of the trackpad towards its center.

This setting can be enabled/disabled in Settings -> Trackpad.

Answer 7

Found a great one!

Alt + ↑, when notification center is open, reveals an additional switch above the Tweet area, to temporarily disable Notification Center:

Once you click the switch:

Edit: Anyone else see this documented anywhere?!? Am I the first one to find this?!?

@siracusa Documented it in his epic Mountain Lion review: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/4/#notification-center