Many Mac users arriving from the land of Windows PC keyboards will notice that the Apple keyboards as well as those included on a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro do not have the standard “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys. This does not mean you can’t page up and page down on a Mac, however, and, similar to the Home and End functions, there are two distinct ways to accomplish the equivalent of paging up and paging down on any Mac keyboard with Mac OS X.
Let’s quickly review the keystrokes to accomplish paging on Mac keyboards.
Page Up with Fn + Up Arrow
The “fn” key is at the lower left of all modern Mac keyboards, and when you combine that with the Up arrow, which is found on the lower right of the keyboard, you will perform the equivalent of a page up.
Page Down with Fn + Down Arrow
Paging down is done the same way as paging up, using the same “fn” key and the Down arrow to perform the equivalent of a page down on a Mac keyboard.
Yes, this is the same on all Mac keyboards, including the Apple Wireless Keyboard, the MacBook Pro keyboard, MacBook Air, and MacBook keyboards. The Apple Extended Keyboard has dedicated Page Up and Page Down keys, but this Function+Arrow trick will still work on that keyboard as well.
Speaking of Function key tricks, those arriving from the PC world may also find it useful to know that Function+Delete does the Mac equivalent of the DEL key on PC keyboards, and there are many other function key modifiers to perform similar actions on the otherwise more minimalist keyboards commonly seen on Mac hardware.
Knowing the appropriate Page Up and Page Down shortcuts can be particularly helpful with other text navigation keystrokes like these.
Of course another approach would be to modify the scrolling speed for the trackpad or mouse the Mac is using, but that’s obviously not using the keyboard.
Back to the keyboard, most web browsers on the Mac support alternate Page Up and Page Down methods as well by using the spacebar. Not all apps support this method, but nearly all web browsers do:
Mac Web Browsers: Page Down with Spacebar
Assuming the cursor is not in an active text box, hitting the Spacebar will Page Down in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
Mac Web Browsers: Page Up with Shift + Spacebar
Again, assuming the cursor is not selected into an active text box or the URL bar, hitting Shift+Spacebar will perform a Page Up in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
Related
Eddy is a computer specialist and a technology geek, He has an exceptional experience is programming and analyzing any new technology entering the market.
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. The Page Up and Page Down keys (sometimes abbreviated as PgUp and PgDn) are two keys commonly found on computer keyboards.
Find sources: "Page Up and Page Down keys" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
The two keys are primarily used to scroll up or down in documents, but the scrolling distance varies between different applications. In word processors, for instance, they may jump by an emulated physical page or by a screen view that may show only part of one page or many pages at once depending on zoom factor. In cases when the document is shorter than the full screen, Page Up and Page Down often have no visible effect at all.
Operating systems differ as to whether the keys (pressed without modifier) simply move the view – e.g. in Mac OS X – or also the input caret – e.g. in Microsoft Windows. In right-to-left settings, PgUp will move either upwards or rightwards (instead of left) and PgDn will move down or leftwards (instead of right). The keys have been dubbed previous page and next page, accordingly.
The arrow keys and the scroll wheel can also be used to scroll a document, although usually by smaller incremental distances. Used together with a modifier key, such as Alt, ⌥ Opt, ^Ctrl or a combination thereof, they may act the same as the Page keys.
In most operating systems, if the Page Up or Page Down key is pressed along with the ⇧ Shift key in editable text, all the text scrolled over will be highlighted.
In some applications, the Page Up and Page Down keys behave differently in caret navigation (toggled with the F7 function key in Windows). For a claimed 30% of people[according to whom?], the paging keys move the text in the opposite direction to what they find natural,[1] and software may contain settings to reverse the operation of these keys to accommodate that.
In August 2008, Microsoft received the patent #7,415,666 for the functions of the two keys – Page Up & Page Down.[2][3]
- Arrow keys
- Scroll wheel
- ^ Wallace, Bob; Elizabeth Houser (1989). PC-Write Reference Manual (3.03 ed.). Seattle, WA: QuickSoft, Inc. p. 397.
- ^ Microsoft Patents Page Up & Down Keys, 2 September 2008, Aaron Heibert, Tom's Hardware, retrieved at 25 January 2017
- ^ Microsoft patents 'Page Up' and 'Page Down', 29 August 2008, David Meyer, ZDNet, retrieved at 25 January 2017
| Esc | F1 | F2 | F3 | F4 | F5 | F6 | F7 | F8 | F9 | F10 | F11 | F12 | PrtScn/ SysRq |
Scroll Lock |
Pause/ Break |
|||||||||
|
Insert | Home | PgUp | Num Lock |
∕ | ∗ | − | |||||||||||||||||
| Delete | End | PgDn | 7 | 8 | 9 | + | ||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| ↑ | 1 | 2 | 3 | Enter | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ← | ↓ | → | 0 Ins |
. Del |
This computer hardware article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- v
- t
- e
Retrieved from "//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Page_Up_and_Page_Down_keys&oldid=1094118655"