Space bar won't open photos in Mojave

Eric: This is fantastic. Your tip--I love it and it (mostly) work. Thank you for taking the time to post it.

I say "mostly" because I have one issue I can't figure out. When I first open Photos, this shortcut doesn't work. I see "image" in the menu bar light up like it's trying to do something but it won't work. However, if I click on the "image" menu bar one time, from then on the space bar will work as I want it to with this short cut. It won't work if I click on other menus, it has to be the "image" menu, and then the space bar works going forward.

Are you experiencing the same behavior? Any way to avoid having to click in the menu bar first?

Thank you!

Same annoying problem here. I tried hitting the return key when first opening Photos since it was the default way to open a thumbnail (besides double clicking), and it no longer works, but after tapping the return key once, then the space bar works without clicking in the Image pull down.

Funny that Apple left the spacebar as a way to, say, look at a pdf file in a Finder window, but someone thought the spacebar was not the way to open a photo!

Eric, I second @Ramblinmanva's comments - thanks for the post!

That said, I'm experiencing the same shortcoming - the spacebar shortcuts only seems to work after I've invoked the "Image" menu. Still looking to Apple for a fix...

This doesn't work for me. Nor does clicking on image. Is this the image menu at the top of the screen? Just click on it then let the drop down menu close and then the space bar is supposed to work. That also doesn't work. only the return key works to open and close images. anyone else having this problem?

Go to the previous page in this discussion. "Eric in Boca" totally and completely solves this blunder by Apple. You might have to use Return once at the start of a Photos session (when you open Photos anew), but then the spacebar will work exactly as before! There is another answer marked "solved" but it doesn't solve anything. It just tells you to use the Return key.

I haven't been able to make it work with a new shortcut key, or clicking the image menu, or clicking the return key when first opening photos. The only thing that works for me is the return key. Frustrating. I left feedback on the link to apple.

Go through all the posts again carefully. It DOES work, but you have to enter the names of the 2 shortcuts exactly as the instructions say: case sensitive. And remember, in a NEW session, like when you restart your computer and open Photos, you have to hit Return the first time you want to Quick Look a photo. But after that, the space bar will work.

The "solved" icon should NOT be on your post. You merely explained the problem better. The person who posted the (almost) perfectly functioning workaround, Eric in Boca, is the one who helped us. We came here for help so we could go on with our work in an efficient manner, not commentary, so please give the "Solved" designation to him.

Sometimes the forum software marking another post as the correct answer, if there is a race condition in the network transfer. Probably you marked the correct post, Kenneth, but on the server my post got marked. I could ask the hosts to remove my reply completely, and then your question would probably have the solved mark, which would not help much. There is something else very strange - Eric in Boca's solution has already 11 well deserved Helpful marks. This alone should have kicked it automatically to the top of the discussion, but that is not happening for some reason.

Also, once I'm signed in, I'm not able to mark any posts as Helpful. I thought maybe because I'd already marked too MANY as helpful, and that I was being limited as to how often I could "vote" on a given thread.

I went to the Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts > Added Photos. For Menu Title I entered "Open Viewer" and for the keyboard shortcut I pressed Fn with Space.

At the same time, I followed the procedure for closing picture preview.

Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts > Added Photos. For Menu Title I entered "Close Viewer" and for the keyboard shortcut I pressed Fn with Space.

Thats great except there seems to be something preventing me from using the same shortcut to open and close. The open with spacebar works fine then gives me an error chime when pressing spacebar to close. Sure would be great if Apple would ruin functionality with new releases ....

Same here, Bell86! Before updating to Mojave 10.14.2 the shortcut workaround posted by Eric in Boca worked fine on my iMac, but now it´s only possible to have a shortcut to open or to close, not both! **** nuisance!

what idiots.... why do they always change stuff that works! fix the sh... that doesn't! I makes me so angry that after every update I have to change my workflow because they keep changing things. One of the reasons I stopped using Windows a decade ago, but it seems to be just as bad here these days. Please bring back the space bar preview !!!