I’m afraid Apple Support hasn’t been very helpful with this, and I’m hoping someone here knows.
I was in Ventura on my 2021 MBP M1. The default shortcut to Send in Mail in Ventura is CMD+D. I found that awkward to type and so in keyboard settings set it to CMD+return.
The problem was it sometimes worked, and sometimes I’d just get a “click” sound. When it didn’t work, if I displayed the Message menu it would work just after that. But then again later when sending it wouldn’t work.
After a long Apple support call they recommended upgrading to Sonoma, so I did. To my surprised the new keystroke got even worse! Now it’s CMD+SHIFT+D. Three keys! You have to be a contortionist to type it.
Instead of CMD+return I also tried CMD+\ and that seemed to work at first, but then fell into the same pattern. It would work the first time and maybe a few times after that, and then I would just get clicks when trying to send - unless I showed the Message menu first.
So… is there any way of overriding CMD+Shift+D to Send a message in Apple Mail?
I use Karabiner-Elements for this remapping. It doesn’t actually disable the CMD-Shift-D shortcut, but it’s reliable for using CMD-Return.
It’s free, and there’s a large library of user-created key mappings, plus you can, if you wish, learn how to create your own complex mappings. I use it for only a few things, the two most important to me being the CMD-Return for Send and mapping Shift-Delete to a forward delete. With a TouchBar Mac (2019 MBP 16"), I find it essential for making things that would normally be Fkeys or require the fn key to be held down more readily accessible. (I don’t normally set the TouchBar to show Fkeys, but instead the app-specific buttons and Control Strip, and I’ve used BetterTouchTool to add buttons to some apps.)
The current version requires Big Sur or later, but you can download most older versions from the Release Notes page in the Documentation section of their web site, if you need compatibility with an older macOS. They have old versions available going back to when it was named just Karabiner and used a kext, or even the original KeyRemap4MacBook, back to version 3.0.0 from 2008. The only time I’ve ever had trouble with it was when Apple deprecated third-party kexts, forcing the developer to completely rewrite it.
How absolutely bizarre. I could swear it was Cmd+D when I deleted my override keystrokes. And I was using Cmd+D to send mails for a day. And the Apple Support person I talked to also said she was seeing Cmd+D.
But a check of Apple docs for Ventura shows you are completely correct.
It is a little confusing at first. It’s definitely meant as a tinkerer’s tool. I highly recommend reading the documentation available on the web site.
The CMD-Return (or CMD-Enter, as it’s called in Karabiner-Elements) is found under Complex Modifications. If you go to that pane in the settings, there’s a button for “Add Rule”. If you click this button, it brings up a window with available rules. The one you’re looking for is under “Apple Mail shortcuts”. If you don’t see it in the list (which is generally the case on a new install), click on “Import more rules from the Internet”. This will open a web page with the full collection of available importable mappings.
The Mail shortcut is in the Application Specific section, under “Apple Mail shortcuts”. The disclosure arrow will show all the available mappings in that category—right now, CMD-Enter/CMD-Return is the only one listed. Click “Import”, and you’ll go through a couple of confirmation dialogs, after which the mapping will be added to Karabiner-Elements. Then it should appear in the list. Click on “Enable” to activate it. Close this window, then close K-E Settings, and it should be available immediately. Note that it is possible to import and enable the same mapping multiple times—K-E doesn’t check for duplication—but you can easily delete dupes.
It’s worthwhile to skim the full list of importable mods. You’re almost guaranteed to find ones in the list that you hadn’t considered before but sound useful. It is a really long list, though, and a huge portion of it is aimed at command-line junkies and coders, and another huge portion is modifications for using foreign-language keyboards (that is, keyboards and characters for languages other than the one your Mac keyboard was designed for). But there are some intriguing options available, including finer control for volume and brightness keys.
Also worth considering I suppose. But the biggest mystery is why doesn’t the standard keyboard setting feature work reliably in MacOS? Like it “sometimes does, sometimes doesn’t.”
Very much worth considering! Keyboard Maestro is the bees knees. Worth every penny. You can do astonishing things with it. It seems intimidating at first, but it’s been refined for years and years so once you get your feet wet a little bit the rest flows easily.
Tee hee! Massive over-kill for a simple keyboard mapping, true. Karabiner may be your best solution.
But the reason I mention it is because it is surprisingly useful and powerful in all sorts of areas. If you look at the website you will see endless lists of uses that may cause your brain to shut down. You can, of course, use it to create keyboard shortcuts but I’ll give a couple examples that are hum-drum and not so hum-drum.
— Set up a macro that when you type (anywhere) “c d d” it is replaced with the current date. Or “3 k d” produces a sign-off with three kissing emojis and your name (I like her a lot).
— Build a macro that goes through a 100-page website listing of addresses, copies the addresses, removes the cruft, and saves them out as text files.
— Select a temperature listing in an article, hit a keyboard shortcut of your choice and get a billboard size list of the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius.
— Launch a utility by picking it from your palette of stuff where you can’t remember what it’s called but you do use it every month or so.
OK, that’s enough. Fancy stuff requires a programmer head but there are little things Keyboard Maestro affords that are truly useful and pleasing as you plunk down one key and a bunch of simple stuff happens, zip, zip, zip that you know would have taken you much “longer” (er, seconds).
Thanks. That’s all interesting but… there are already text replacements in Settings > Keyboard
For example if I type in (being careful now) “j address” (no space) it immediately substitutes my japanese address 〒123-1234 東京都葛飾区新小岩7-6-5. (I changed my address a bit here so I don’t start getting spam letter offers to buy my house.
I really can’t figure it out. There’s Add predefined rule and Add your own rule, but Apple Mail shortcuts doesn’t appear in either settings box. Both are empty.
I tried Keyboard Maestro yesterday. It looked quite cool. I went through the tutorial and said, oh, that looks really straightforward. And I went through the intro.
Then I tried to create a Send shortcut for Mail.app to CMD+return and for the life of me could not figure out how.
I deleted it for now but am willing to try again.
In other news, I did a screen share with Apple Support last evening to demonstrate the bug and naturally CMD+return worked every single time I tried to show how it wasn’t working. And it’s working so far this morning.
