How to Forward Delete on a Mac Keyboard

Windows keyboards have two erase keys: Backspace (left of the cursor) and Delete (right of the cursor). Mac laptops have just one, labelled delete, and it works like Backspace. The forward-delete function is still there — it's hiding behind the Fn key.

The shortcut: Fn+Delete

Press Fn+Delete (on newer MacBooks the Fn key is also labelled with a 🌐 globe) and the character to the right of the insertion point disappears. That's it — this works in effectively every text field on the Mac, from TextEdit to Safari to file rename boxes.

If you use a full-size external keyboard, you already have a real forward-delete key: it's the small key labelled delete ⌦ in the cluster above the arrow keys. The ⌦ symbol is how macOS menus refer to forward delete, just as ⌫ means ordinary delete.

There's also a mouse-free alternative from the Unix world: Ctrl+D forward-deletes one character in most native Mac text fields (a leftover of the emacs-style bindings built into macOS's text system). It won't work everywhere — some apps use Ctrl+D for other things, and in Terminal it sends end-of-file — but it saves a trip to the Fn key when it does.

Why bother with forward delete at all? Because it removes a whole class of arrow-key shuffling: any time the cursor lands before the text you want gone — after clicking mid-sentence, tabbing into a pre-filled form field, or fixing a doubled word — you can erase in place instead of navigating past the mistake first.

Delete the whole next word or line

The modifier pattern that macOS uses for cursor movement applies to deleting too:

• Fn+Option+Delete — delete the entire word to the right of the cursor.
• Option+Delete — delete the word to the left (regular backward delete, word-sized).
• Ctrl+K — delete from the cursor to the end of the current paragraph. Another emacs holdover, and the closest thing macOS has to “delete to end of line”. Bonus: Ctrl+Y pastes back whatever Ctrl+K removed, independently of the normal clipboard.

These work in nearly all Cocoa apps — Notes, Mail, Pages, Messages, browser text boxes. Apps with their own text engines (Microsoft Word, some IDEs) may differ slightly, but Fn+Delete itself is close to universal.

Forward delete beyond text

Two places the same idea shows up outside editing:

• Finder: Cmd+Delete moves selected files to the Trash — no forward variant needed, but worth knowing the same key is doing double duty.
• Dialogs and forms: forward delete is handy in Save dialogs and rename fields where the cursor lands at the start of existing text — Fn+Delete clears forward without arrowing to the end first.

Every delete shortcut at a glance

• Delete — one character to the left.
• Fn+Delete (or ⌦ on full-size keyboards) — one character to the right.
• Option+Delete — the word to the left.
• Fn+Option+Delete — the word to the right.
• Cmd+Delete — everything back to the start of the line.
• Ctrl+K — everything forward to the end of the paragraph (Ctrl+Y brings it back).

Notice the pattern: Fn flips the direction, Option scales up to a word, Cmd scales up to a line. The same modifiers do the same jobs for moving the cursor and selecting text, so once forward delete is in your fingers, the rest of the editing shortcuts come almost free. And if you overdelete, Cmd+Z undoes a deletion like any other edit — even a Ctrl+K that took out half a paragraph.

Build the full editing cluster

Forward delete pairs naturally with word-jumping (Option+Left/Right) and line-jumping (Cmd+Left/Right). Get the complete set in delete a whole word or line at once.