Apple has changed the soft return key combination (again)

Hey Leon,

Very interesting question as I use a soft return quite often myself with any number of applications on my mac(s).

Yes it has been Ctrl-Enter (or Ctrl-return) for a long time. I did not need to drive out to test it, as I have an old iMac with Catalina on my desk.

Very interesting discussion as well, and some good points were made although I didn't have time to dive in to it at that moment.

In Pages I had already found (in Keyboard shortcuts) that it had been changed to Shift-Return. However, this does not work in Mail. I didn't test it in any other apps, used the new key-combination in Pages and got on with my work, still with your post in the back of my mind.

But, as I was editing an e-mail today, the issue bugged me : everytime I wanted a soft return I got a contextual menu. Very frustrating.

So I went on a little search, and voilá : found it 🙂

You need to go to : System Settings/Keyboard/Keyboard Shortcuts/Keyboard/ and toggle off the 'Show contextual menu' tickbox.

That's it, back to happily typing as usual. Hope that works for you as well.

Apple Mail is not a text editor or word-processing application and you should not expect otherwise. In Apple Mail (macOS Sequoia v15.1) a control+return triggers a secondary menu while a shift+return inserts a single newline, not the line separator (U+2028) character. I confirmed that with a hex editor.

In Pages v14.2 on Sequoia v15.1, a shift-return does enter a line separator character, and a control+return triggers a secondary menu. There was a short window before this version of Pages where either sequence would insert a line separator, and before that, it was broken and only a control+return would insert a line separator.

In Apple Mail, if you want to insert a line separator character, you would need to set that up as a Text Replacement in System Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacements… and in Apple Mail Edit menu, have Substitutions > Text Replacement selected, so that when you type a character sequence, the line separator character is inserted.

Leon Buijs wrote:

Tldr; how can I maintain using CTRL-return to type a soft return?

In Mail and Text Editor etc, I'm used to typing a soft return (also called paragraph separator or line break within a paragraph) with CTRL-return — after Apple changed it from shift-return in 2017.

Much to my frustration, Apple seems to have changed it again in macOS 15 Sequoia.

This time it has been changed to fn-shift-return. This is impossible to blindly type with my left hand (while keeping my right hand on the mouse) since there is no fn-key on the left side of the keyboard. Also hard to learn with my right hand since the fn-key is not on the same 'island'.

I really don't understand what the advantage of this change is.

I know Apple has moved the fn-key to the bottom left on their latest keyboards, but I don't see the advantage of yet another modifier-key.

I'd like to change it back, but the systems preferences keyboard feature doesn't let you. Any workarounds? Even buying a new keyboard doesn't solve this because I'd have to basically unlearn and relearn all keyboard combinations. WHY?!

PAGES Shift+Return Keystroke for soft ret… - Apple Community

you can submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

I'm familiar with soft line breaks in apps like Word. But they don't really exist anywhere else.

Also, the control key has been used for a context menu for many years. It can't be used as a modifier.

And finally, when I try fn-shift-return in Mail, I just get a square box. In TextEdit, nothing happens.

Leon Buijs wrote:

You seem to spend a lot of time and effort on this community. I appreciate your input. However, soft returns do exist and always have both in macOS, macOS applications, their underpinnings and elsewhere, going back, under the name carriage return, to the original ASCII set from 1963, predating UNIX.

That's not quite the same. There are two ASCII codes, carriage return (CR - 13, or 0D) and line feed (LF - 10, or 0A). Together, they make a CRLF. Back in the day, some systems like the Mac used only CR. Unix used LF. Windows used both. Windows pretty much won the battle. The canonical newline is now CRLF.

However, the idea of a soft return really has nothing to do with various new line characters. In word processing, there are paragraphs and line breaks. A "soft return" is really just a line break. How that is implemented internally is implementation defined. The keystrokes uses to generate one or the other are also implementation defined. There is no right or wrong.

The control key is a modifier key by the definition that it modifies the function of other keys. I use it every day for keyboard shortcuts. For example, I use CTRL-numpad zero to move and resize a window to the left half of the screen.

You're right that fn-SHIFT-retun was a mistake: I meant fn-CTRL-return. Unfortunately I can't correct that any more.

Mail doesn't have indented regular text, but it has lists.

A soft return in a list item in Mail will cause the text to go to a new line, while staying indented.

I see what you mean now. I actually didn't know that Mail could do lists. It isn't a default option on the toolbar. A list is the most likely place to use line break.

And you are correct. Before Sequoia, it was control-return. But Apple made changes. Apparently, control-return now triggers the context menu. So you have to type fn-control-return.

But ironically enough, whether control-return or fn-control-return, Apple was always wrong here. The control key is the modifier on Unix and Windows. The Mac equivalent is the command key. The control key should not be used as a modifier. Otherwise, it would interfere with other situations, like other platforms on a virtual machine, or even the Mac's own command line, where the control key is required.

Most word processing software uses shift-return or option-return to generate a soft return. MS Word uses shift. Virtually all other contexts use option.

This also works since day one in other macOS apps like TextEdit, Notes, Calender, Messages, etc. Soft returns are more useful in TextEdit than in Mail because TextEdit allows for indented text in regular format.

Even Apple is all over the place. While you can use control-return (or fn-control-return now) in Notes, you can also use shift-return. Messages seems to accept anything - shift, option, or control.

There's just no standard way to do this. Normally it's option-return, sometimes shift-return. fn or not, it's never control-return.

Leon Buijs wrote:

I can't help but wondering why Apple would think a contextual menu is more useful / popular than a soft return. Weird choice to turn this option on per default, specially since both already had shortcuts assigned for decades.

Apple gets tons of usage data and they probably base at least some of their choices on that. I suspect (based on this thread) that very few people need the soft return. I can't imagine when I would need it. On the other hand, I use the contextual menu multiple times a day. Of course, my data is limited.

The shortcut for the contextual menu has been the control key for as long as I can remember, mostly because the control key has been the shortcut for the right-click since..... a really long time. You can also access the contextual menu with a right click if you have a mouse that will allow it. I don't remember it ever being ALT-F12 (assuming you mean option-F12 as there is no ALT key on a standard Mac keyboard). So, I think most of us haven't had to relearn anything. ;-)

Leon Buijs wrote:

I'm talking about CTRL-return. I don't see what CTRL-mouse click has to do with it. That hasn't changed, so that is not the problem.

That is precisely the problem. Apple changed CTRL-return so that it would perform the same operation as CTRL-mouse click.

Unfortunately, Apple never should have used CTRL in the first place. So they now have to change the old hotkey to something else. It would have been better if they had changed it to option-return or shift-return, which are more standard across different apps and platforms.