How can I activate buttons with just the keyboard?

Question

Many user interface (UI) elements or dialog boxes have buttons. I would like to be able to activate a button with just the keyboard, without the mouse. How can I do this?

Answer 1

For many dialog boxes you can select the option you want by pressing ⌘+firstletter where firstletter is the first letter of the option you want to select

Answer 2

Enable Keyboard Control of the UI

System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts

Then select "All Controls" radio button at the bottom, rather than just "Text boxes and lists only".

Keyboard Shortcuts

• ⇥ (TAB) will move between buttons.
• esc (ESC) is cancel.
• space (SPACE) selects the active button (blue, outline).
• ↩ (RETURN) is OK or the default button (blue, pulsing, filled).
• For some dialog boxes, ⌘+first_letter will select the button with a certain first letter in the text (as pointed out by @Griffo).

Answer 3

To elaborate on the answers above, many (most?) dialogue boxes will have the default option in blue. Hitting ⇥ will cycle between options, with a blue outline around the other button, but the default will remain blue. Hitting ↩ will always select the default, space will select whichever button is highlighted.

In this example, pressing ↩ will 'Keep .txt' and pressing space will 'Use .bak.'

Answer 4

⌘+. also works for Cancel. And in some applications just pressing the initial letters works. Photoshop is one, but it's pretty common for other cross-platform applications too.

Typing ⌘+W+D is a quick way to do something like Close and don't save.

Answer 5

See full Keyboard Access at the bottom of the following screenshot:

When a prompt window like the one you included appears, the selected button will be highlighted in blue.
Screenshot:

Then you press the space to action that button.

Answer 6

Tab to move to the next dialog box. Space to select