How to right-click a _highlighted_ file without the mouse?

I greatly prefer the highlight bar. I don't have to move my hand to the mouse, lose my home position with my fingers, and I can see all quantities all the way across to be sure I've got it right and it's far more likely the mouse might get bumped and drift off target. It takes me more effort with the mouse. This is especially true if the highlight bar is already there and then later I decide I want to right-click. The fastest thing then is if there were a keyboard shortcut. And after using the mouse you have to go back to the keyboard and reposition your hands on the home keys. I've used both Windows and macOS and greatly prefer the way Windows does this.

What little I've done with the trackpad I don't like. I find it easier to position the pointer with a mouse. I don't know why. And I still have to move my hand away from the keyboard and reposition it over the home keys afterward.

I'm beginning to think that this simply cannot be done with macOS without Apple rewriting some internal code.

Just curious. What version of macOS are you using? I'm using Mojave and I don't have that "Pointer Control" item.

Regardless, it doesn't do what I want, as you already said in a follow-up. Still, F12 might be preferable to Control-5. I'm guessing you have Catalina or Big Sur.

First step doesn't work. So I activated Mouse Keys by pressing the Option key 5 times. (The option for the shortcut you said to use is unchecked on my system.)

I selected a file by using the up/down arrow keys to move the highlight bar to the desired file.

I pressed Control-5 and I got the context menu for the file that was under the pointer, not the one that was highlighted, which is just the opposite of what I want. So it didn't work.

Thanks anyway!

BONUS PROBLEM: "Show Accessibility status in menu bar" doesn't work. All it does is put a circled person in the status menu areas. It doesn't change if you toggle Mouse Keys on or off. If you click it, all you get is a menu with a whole lot of grayed-out options except one that shows the Accessibility panel in Sys Pref. So all it does is tell you that you've asked it to be there, which is totally worthless. What a surprise.

Greetings,

Yes, I think you're right. More evidence to this point is given by a 3rd party app I have called Final Cut Library Manager. It does the same thing with the right-click. And when you use PgUp and PgDn, the highlight bar scrolls off screen, just like on macOS apps. Oh well. Thanks for giving it a shot. I appreciate your efforts. As for the right-click bit again, point Windows. :-(

Thanks!

I think I already have made a request to Feedback. I assume that on Big Sur, this is still the way it works, in which case it wouldn't hurt to submit another request. Also, it would be nice if they would fix the BONUS PROBLEM above. At least it doesn't break the video like it did on Windows NT long ago. I would toggle on the show mouse keys status icon thing in the system tray. But over the next hour or two, the screen would start going wacko. Fonts would become really big. Parts of windows overlapped incorrectly. At least that doesn't happen here. Here it just means you asked it to show itself. Which is of no practical use! It's gotta be a bug. Thanks again.

Control-click uses the mouse. I asked if it can be done WITHOUT the mouse. And I need it to work on the highlighted file, not a file that just happens to be under the mouse pointer.

Thanks for your efforts! I appreciate it.