Tip: Using Exposé on MacBook Pro
By default, your MacBook Pro’s top row of keys is dedicated to hardware features. To invoke Exposé, you have to remember to press Fn in the bottom-left corner of the keyboard while pressing that F9 key—pretty frustrating if those Exposé keys are already commited to muscle memory from working on a desktop Mac.
Fortunately, there’s an easy fix:
- Open the Keyboard & Mouse system preference panel.
- Make sure Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features is checked.
F9 now invokes Exposé, no Fn required. This setting tells Mac OS X to dedicate that top row of keys to software features, and to require Fn to access the hardware features, neatly inverting the normal meaning.
Pretty handy if you use Exposé a lot more than you change your Mac’s volume or brightness.
I think Exposé is much too important to be relegated to a key: I use Fitt’s law and activate Exposé by moving the mouse to a corner of the screen (you’d have to use the mouse anyway to select a window afterwards).
It almost feels like the ‘flipping’ movement from the iphone to ‘throw’ the mouse into a corner with the touchpad.
For me: left bottom is “show all windows” and top right is “show desktop”.
word of caution: such settings will drive other people mad when they try to use your trackpad
What I need is the functionality of the keys as they are on Powerbooks:
F1 & F2: Screen brightness
F3-F5: Audio
F9-F11: Exposé
F12: Dashboard
All without having to press the fn key.
The checkbox you describe goes too far in switching the functionalities around.
I’m confused… why not just change the action keys for Exposé over to F11 and F12? That’s what I’ve done. And for Dashboard, I use command-F12. Works just fine.
Brilliant. Thank you! The preferences settings for Expose lie unless you follow your steps above.