Most new Mac keyboards are fairly simplified when compared to their PC counterparts, and you’ll find that some of the extraneous keys like “Home” and “End” are nowhere to be found on the Mac wireless keyboard or any keyboard included with a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Longtime Mac users appreciate this simplicity, but newcomers to the Mac platform can be a bit confused or frustrated as they’ve come to rely on the instant-action buttons on PC keyboards, sometimes making the incorrect assumption that similar actions are impossible in Mac OS X.
But even without the dedicated buttons on a Mac keyboard, this does not mean you can’t perform the exact same function in Mac OS as what the Home and End buttons offer in Windows and Linux. Instead of pressing a single key though, on the Mac keyboard you press keyboard shortcut to achieve the same desired effect.
The “Home” button on a Mac keyboard: Fn + Left Arrow
The ‘fn’ key on the Mac keyboard is the function button, hitting that with the left arrow will immediately jump to the very top of a page in the active application of Mac OS. This is the exact same function as hitting the “Home” button on a Windows PC.
The “End” button on a Mac Keyboard: Fn + Right Arrow
Hitting the function key with the right arrow will immediately scroll to the very bottom of an open document or page, regardless of how long it is. This is basically the same thing as pressing the “End” key on a Windows PC, except it’s a keyboard shortcut.
For the Home and End equivalence in Mac OS X, you can use these keyboard shortcuts or a similar set of Command key tricks which can achieve the same effect of jumping to the start and end of documents, it doesn’t matter which you use, both will get the job done and work the same, so go with whatever works better for your workflow, or whichever you memorize.
If you found this helpful, you’d likely appreciate knowing the PC DEL key also has a Mac keystroke equivalent, and taking the time to learn a handful of other keyboard shortcuts to navigate text on the Mac can be a worthwhile endeavor as well.
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