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I have a bunch of keyboard shortcuts setup for Pages, Keynote, and several other programs. Is there a way to export and then import these shortcuts? I just reformatted my home computer and am now going through the painful process of re-creating all the shortcuts.

Paul Irish's dotfiles got me thinking about this: https://github.com/paulirish/dotfiles

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Could you explain why Paul Irish's dotfiles made you think about that or pinpoint the actual code you are referring to? – Gerry Oct 9 '12 at 12:45

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It depends on how you have defined the shortcut keys. The files responsible for storing these preferences are in the usual place: ~/Library/Preferences

You could simply move the files that store the preferences over to the new Mac:

  • com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist
  • com.apple.universalaccess.plist
  • com.apple.iWork.Keynote.plist
  • com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist

If you were good at parsing JSON or XML, you could do the export to a text file as well using the plutil tool.

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I've defined the shortcuts via the System Preferences > Keyboard panel. Should/can I do this via a text editor? That'd be better for sure. – saltcod Oct 9 '12 at 13:50
The big thing is that application shortcuts go into the app preference file and system wide ones, the system pref file. You can use PlistBuddy and plutil to systematically convert a text file into property list additions as well as to issue defaults write commands to append them. This is advanced scripting, but doable for a DIY hacker. – bmike♦ Oct 9 '12 at 13:52
Awesome. Thanks, bmike. – saltcod Oct 9 '12 at 13:57
up vote 1 down vote

The above answer is too complicated. With Keynote 9 (v 5.3) and Mountain Lion, and assuming that the format bar is visible, you can simply define a key in Keyboard Shortcuts panel of the Keyboard System Preference:

  1. Select "Application Shortcuts", and click the + icon
  2. Select the Keynote application.
  3. For the Menu Title type the font name exactly as it appears in the format bar. I entered "Times New Roman".
  4. Type the shortcut key (I used Option+Command+R).
  5. Quit Keynote and restart it.
  6. Select some text and type the shortcut key. The font will change to Times New Roman.
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up vote 0 down vote

The shortcuts for sandboxed applications are stored in ~/Library/Containers/*/Data/Library/Preferences/*.plist. The shortcuts for all applications are in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist. You could probably just copy the preference files from the old account.

I use a shell script like this to configure the shortcuts in the old-style property list format. You can print the current settings with defaults read.

defaults write -g NSUserKeyEquivalents '{
"Back" = "@\UF702";
"Go Back" = "@\UF702";
"Forward" = "@\UF703";
"Go Forward" = "@\UF703";
"Minimize" = "\0";
}'

defaults write com.apple.finder NSUserKeyEquivalents '{
"Show Package Contents" = "@\r";
}'
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