Who Hid the Hash Key? | Yellow Swordfish

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Posted on June 1, 2005 in Mac Switching by Andy @ Yellow Swordfish31 Comments »

I’m a Mac Switcher. The genuine article. I was a PC man through and through from the birth of the IBM right up to a year ago when something came over me and in a hypnotic haze I found myself at an Apple dealer drooling over a Powerbook. Regrets? none at all. Except…
There is something that every Mac Switcher needs to know right at the beginning that nobody tells you. It’s not that you now have a single menu bar. It’s not that you now have a one button mouse. It’s not even that you can turn off that silly dock magnification that you suspect was designed by Fisher-Price.
Fisher-Price Telephone And while it might be that clicking the red button in the top left of the window doesn’t actually close the application – well most of them – it isn’t. And while I’m at it where the hell is the hash key? How do Mac people write CSS?
Actually, it’s this. A year after you’ve owned your shiny, fun Mac – about that time when walking the dog leads to separation anxiety – there are still lots of things you don’t have a clue about. Mac die-hards know all the nooks and crannies – they were there at the birth. Mac Switchers don’t know half of it. So they look in the box for documentation. Mine told me how to turn it on. Then they look at the Help system. Unwise. If they are lucky, they know other Mac users and can ask. Don’t get into that one. So we wallow in ignorance until we come across an item on Daring Fireball or Apple Matters and then slap our heads in enlightenment. How about an example?
Folder Actions. I know how to enable them. I know how to disable them. The Help system told me that although the menu options were unequivocal. Doesn’t mean I have a clue what they are.

The wonderful telephone courtesy of Fisher-Price. Ah! That brings back memories!

31 Responses to “Who Hid the Hash Key?”

on 03 Jun 2005 at 6:49 pm1Miche Doherty

“And while I’m at it where the hell is the hash key?”

In case that’s not a rhetorical question: on a UK Mac keyboard # is alt+3.
on 03 Jun 2005 at 7:43 pm2Andy @ Yellow Swordfish

#### How about that! – No, it wasn’t rhetorical. I looked everywhere – help files, books (OK the one I have was for Jaguar but all the same). Now I’m going to try out all the ‘alt’ keys and see what other gems are out there undocumented. This kind of proves my point. Apple seem to just expect you to know these things…. Hey – look what I can do… ##### Thanks
on 07 Jul 2005 at 3:50 pm3Tim Binder

In the old OS, there used to be a Keyboard Desk Accessory, which acted as a great reference. Also, most of the mappings have some sort of logic behind them (Alt/Option-3 for the “#”, since it’s Shift-3 on a US keyboard, I would guess, for instance.)

But to see *everything* available, go to your System Preferences: International pane: Input Menu tab. Turn on Keyboard Viewer. Also check “Show input menu in menu bar”, if it doesn’t check itself automatically.

You should now have a flag in your menu bar (a British one, I would suppose). Select “Show Keyboard Viewer” from that menu. A floating keyboard will appear on your screen which will show you all possible entry options for your keyboard, interactively.

One note on alternate characters: when you hold down the Option key, a few of the keys will be orange (at least on my system). These will all be accents. If you type the accent key then a “valid” letter (such as ´ then a), it will use that accent with the letter (á). Any other letter and you will get the accent by itself, then the second letter (´g). On an American keyboard, the accents are always on keys that can take an accent. In general, I find this approach a lot easier to remember than Alt-160. (Although I note that later versions of Windows have an optional, easier input method.)

I hope this helps a bit. I will agree that there’s a lot hidden in the OS that Mac users take for granted. I think part of the problem is that Apple is now being run by the NeXT crew and usability/human interface is somewhat less of a priority for them.
on 07 Jul 2005 at 4:19 pm4Andy @ Yellow Swordfish

Ah! This was sounding so good…. (and thanks for the detail by the way – very much appreciated). But… my International Pane > input menu doesn’t have any mention of ‘Turn on Keyboard Viewer’. I might have noticed it before if it had! This is 10.4 by the way. Shame – it sounded so useful!
on 07 Jul 2005 at 5:30 pm5Tim Binder

I’m using 10.4.1 (US version) and it’s the third item listed, underneath “Character Palette” and “Japanese Kana Palette”. Full details are:

Name: Keyboard Viewer
Input type: Palette
Script: Unicode

Something like this has been pretty standard in all the OS X versions. Perhaps something was skipped during the install? (I just did a Google & it’s even a Tiger Tip of the Week: http://www.apple.com/macosx/tips/ — maybe that will help?)

Also, the Character Palette is useful for find unusual characters, but, unfortunately, not for finding out how to type them.

Good luck with it. I hope you can get it working.
on 07 Jul 2005 at 6:56 pm6Andy @ Yellow Swordfish

Tim. I’m stupid! I was looking underneath the listbox thinking the listbox was filled with languages! I’ve found it now and am going to have a play right away. Thanks very much for pointing this out. It may prove invaluable!

Now to try and find out what these folder actions are all about…..!
on 07 Jul 2005 at 6:59 pm7Tim Binder

Glad it worked out for you. Here’s Apple on Folder Actions:

http://www.apple.com/applescript/folderactions/

Basically, they’re AppleScripts that you attach to a folder which will run when trigger events occur, such as opening or closing the folder, adding an item, etc.
on 23 Aug 2006 at 1:04 am8ALT+3

ALT+3 # since this blog is so high on google then I hope you find the answer faster than I did the first time

ALT+3 is the hash key # on UK keyboards

Thank god, been looking for weeks.

ALT+3 ALT+3 ALT+3 # mac # mac
on 31 Aug 2006 at 8:20 pm9hungry-Joe

Thank you alt+3 !,
what a pain in the #ss trying to find this
on 31 Aug 2006 at 8:26 pm10Andy @ Yellow Swordfish

Wasn’t it just!
on 18 Oct 2006 at 3:42 pm11apple

thank you thank you thank you
on 23 Apr 2007 at 10:43 pm12Dave Nash

#### Thanks ####
Still relevant in 2007 I’ve just converted to Mac.
on 02 Jul 2007 at 4:43 pm13rob

i just switched to mac and love it but this really bugged me thanks XD ###.
on 21 Sep 2007 at 2:37 pm14Alex

yes same here! what a pain.
I’ve just bought a shiny MacBook after my 3 year old Samsung laptop blue screened on me
Very happy with my mac but spent ages looking for the # key!
cheers for this one
on 05 Nov 2007 at 5:24 pm15tim b

thank god u are highly ranked on google, and i cant be bothered to look for something that isnt immediately obvious for more than 2 secs withotu checking google first.

cheers dude

alt + 3 # mac ftw

leg – end
on 18 Nov 2007 at 5:42 pm16Vortex

At long last… thanks, y’all
on 26 Nov 2007 at 1:26 pm17Brad

LoL Cheers! simple google search for "hash key mac" without the quotes got me straight here Nice one haha
on 07 Jan 2008 at 5:39 pm18rich c

Thanks. Just switched to Mac and still relevant in 2008.
on 29 Jan 2008 at 1:05 am19Pauked.com » Where’s the Hash Key on a Mac?

[...] question I know, but as I found out from here, the hash key, #, is ALT + 3 on a UK Mac keyboard instead of near the Enter key on a normal UK PC [...]
on 20 Mar 2008 at 12:17 pm20David Little: A blog of sorts. Littled.net » Blog Archive » Plone 3 fun ride

[...] Where’s the hash key on a Mac keyboard? Oh right, alt plus 3. Nice and [...]
on 16 Apr 2008 at 9:43 am21Jazzboi

Thank you so much! I havn’t been able to write sharps in my music until I found this page!
on 11 Jun 2008 at 12:13 pm22Law

Yey – I can do # again!! lol

Oh – fyi – that keybinding doesn’t work if you are forced to use Windows via VMWare Fusion at least…. I program .NET for a living so I still can’t go 100% win-free, and its causing me headaches.

Thanks for the help anyway!!
on 11 Jun 2008 at 12:21 pm23Law

Found the solution to #’s for vmware/windows setups on a June 2008 Macbook Pro British keyboard – a simple “shift and \” will give you the # you need!!
on 11 Jun 2008 at 5:32 pm24Andy @ Yellow Swordfish

@Law: Useful info – thanks
on 09 Aug 2008 at 10:57 pm25Hash lover!!

Yay, thansk, it’s been annoying me!!
######################
on 01 Sep 2008 at 1:12 pm26cgimusic

For VMWare on my Mac it’s Shift+3.
on 04 Oct 2008 at 7:57 pm27Максим

Спасибо вам огромное, пост действительно грамотно написан и по делу, есть что почерпнуть.
on 14 Oct 2008 at 8:30 pm28MaFt

awesome stuff! cheers for all the tips! just moved to mac and really needed the # for css

i would have worked it out but i was using the alt key as a shortcut for spaces so it jumped to my 3rd space when i tried it initially!!

MaFt
on 25 Nov 2008 at 9:33 pm29Simon

Praise be to you ###
on 29 Nov 2008 at 3:16 pm30Frank

Thanks forthis. I’ve grown up with PCs and have occasionally to use Macs. I’m sorry but they are just too quirky to be easy to use. This is just the sort of thing they assume you know, and there is no way to find out. Thanks again.

There is an old MS-DOS shortcut that still works in Windows: Alt + numeric code on the right hand keypad will give any character in the code table. So Alt 35 gives #, $ is Alt 36, £ is Alt 156, etc. Does the Mac have anything like this?
on 01 Dec 2008 at 10:40 am31Andy @ Yellow Swordfish

@Frank: Sorry I was slow getting to this. Quirky? I could never go back to usng a PC all of the time (which I did since they first hit the shops up to 2004). The overall experience is just so much better…

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31 Responses to “Who Hid the Hash Key?”