Full keyboard access is useful for people who have difficulty using a mouse. Safari supports standard full keyboard access shortcuts for buttons and menus. You can also use the keyboard to highlight links in webpages.
With full keyboard access turned on, Safari uses the standard shortcut keys to access menus and windows, plus the additional shortcuts shown in the table below.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
Keyboard key |
Action |
||
---|---|---|---|
Tab key |
Highlights buttons and text boxes in the address bar, bookmarks and bookmark collections in the bookmarks bar and Bookmarks Library, and tabs in the tab bar. You can also highlight links and buttons in webpages. To turn this feature on, choose Safari > Preferences, click Advanced, and then select "Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage." |
||
Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys |
Opens menus for bookmark collections in the bookmarks bar and for the Back and Forward buttons in the address bar. You can also use the arrow keys to highlight items in these menus. |
||
Option-Tab key |
If you've chosen to highlight links using the Tab key, you can press Option-Tab to select items that are not links. This can be useful if a page has a large number of links. |
||
Space bar |
Selects a highlighted button. |
||
Return key |
Opens a highlighted link. |
Use the Universal Access preferences and the Keyboard & Mouse preferences to turn on accessibility features. To turn on full keyboard access, open the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of Keyboard & Mouse preferences, and select the "Keyboard Navigation" checkbox from the scrolling list.