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jorjohns Author

Level 1

4 points

Dialog keyboard behavior change in Big Sur / Monterey?

I'm running Catalina on my home MBP, and have a new work MBP running Monterey.

On my home laptop, I'm used to this behavior from confirm/cancel or yes/no dialog boxes:

The confirm/yes button is highlighted solid blue
The cancel/no button has a blue border
Enter confirms
Space cancels
Tab switches the solid blue highlight

On my Monterey laptop, the Enter button still confirms, but Tab and Space don't do anything. This is driving me nuts, since I deal with a lot of .xlsm files at work that pop up a "Disable Macros" / "Enable Macros" dialog upon every. single. open. and the Enable button I want isn't selectable by keyboard.

How do I get back the space/tab behavior I want? I'm aware of "Full Keyboard Access", and that seems way excessive for me.

Posted on Apr 1, 2022 11:44 AM

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

67,552 points

Posted on Apr 1, 2022 12:04 PM

Go to System Preferences->Keyboard->Shortcuts, and check the box at the bottom that reads

"Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls"

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Dialog keyboard behavior change in Big Sur / Monterey?

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