The function keys on the Mac are very useful in a few apps (Flash’s F5-8 and Motion’s F1-3 come to mind) but the rest of the time it’s probably more useful to have the media keys (volume, brightness etc.) up front. Yes, you can hold “fn” to get the other option, but that’s tedious. So is switching the priority in System Preferences > Keyboard all the time.<\/p>\n
So, get a script to do it for you<\/a> and use FastScripts<\/a> to assign a shortcut key to it (F13, just above “fn”, is recommended). The only problem is that the posted script works on Leopard, but not Snow Leopard. So… here’s the modified script for 10.6:<\/p>\n Convenient. Now you can use volume easily most of the time, but switch to the function keys for editing or animation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The function keys on the Mac are very useful in a few apps (Flash’s F5-8 and Motion’s F1-3 come to mind) but the rest of the time it’s probably more useful to have the media keys (volume, brightness etc.) up front. Yes, you can hold “fn” to get the other option, but that’s tedious. So … Continue reading F-Keys Quickly<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ntell application \"System Preferences\"
\nactivate
\nset current pane to pane \"com.apple.preference.keyboard\"
\nend tell<\/code><\/small><\/p>\ntell application \"System Events\"
\n-- If we don't have UI Elements enabled, then nothing is really going to work.
\nif UI elements enabled then
\ntell application process \"System Preferences\"
\nget properties<\/code><\/small><\/p>\n <\/code><\/small><\/p>\n click radio button \"Keyboard\" of tab group 1 of window \"Keyboard\"
\nclick checkbox \"Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys\" of tab group 1 of window \"Keyboard\"
\nend tell
\ntell application \"System Preferences\" to quit
\nelse
\n-- GUI scripting not enabled. Display an alert
\ntell application \"System Preferences\"
\nactivate
\nset current pane to pane \"com.apple.preference.universalaccess\"
\ndisplay dialog \"UI element scripting is not enabled. Please activate \"Enable access for assistive devices\"\"
\nend tell
\nend if
\nend tell
\n<\/code><\/small><\/p>\n