Enable Full Keyboard Access on Mac (tab through every control)

By default, pressing Tab in a macOS dialog only moves focus between text fields. Every button, checkbox, and dropdown ignores it — you have to grab the mouse. Full Keyboard Access fixes that: enable it once and Tab cycles through every control on screen.

What Full Keyboard Access does

When Full Keyboard Access is on, macOS draws a blue focus ring around the currently selected control. You Tab through controls and press Space to activate the focused one — confirming an alert, ticking a checkbox, clicking a button — all without touching the mouse.

It's especially useful for confirmation dialogs ("Do you want to save?"), preference panes with checkboxes, and any situation where you want to navigate entirely from the keyboard. It has no downside if you're already a keyboard-first person.

Enable it in System Settings

The setting lives in a slightly different place depending on your macOS version.

macOS Ventura (13) and later

1. Open System Settings (Apple menu → System Settings).
2. Click Keyboard in the sidebar.
3. Turn on the Keyboard navigation toggle.

That's the new name for Full Keyboard Access in macOS 13 and newer. The toggle is right there on the main Keyboard page — no sub-menu needed.

macOS Monterey (12) and earlier

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Click Keyboard, then the Shortcuts tab.
3. At the bottom, find "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" and tick it.

Toggle it with a keyboard shortcut

You can turn Full Keyboard Access on and off without opening settings at all:

Control + F7

On a laptop that uses the function row for brightness, volume, and media keys, you may need:

Fn + Control + F7

This is handy if you only want Full Keyboard Access for a specific task and prefer to switch it off afterwards.

Enable it with a Terminal command

Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities → Terminal) and run:

# enable Full Keyboard Access (value 3 = all controls)
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3

You may need to log out and back in, or restart the affected app, for it to take effect.

To turn it off again:

# disable Full Keyboard Access (value 2 = text fields only)
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 2

Or remove the setting entirely and let macOS use its default:

# remove the setting (reverts to system default)
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode

Using Full Keyboard Access

Once it's on, you'll notice blue rings appearing when you Tab around. The key interactions are:

• Tab — move focus to the next control
• Shift + Tab — move focus backwards
• Space — activate the focused button or toggle the focused checkbox
• Return — activate the default button (blue-highlighted), same as always
• Escape — cancel or close the dialog

In a save dialog, for example, you can Tab to "Don't Save" and press Space — the equivalent of clicking it — without reaching for the mouse.

Why macOS limits Tab by default

Apple's historical reasoning was that casual users find unexpected Tab behavior confusing. If Tab suddenly moves focus to a button and they press Space by accident, they might dismiss a dialog without realising. So the safe default is text-field-only Tab.

Power users who know what they're doing find that default frustrating, which is exactly why the setting exists. Once you're used to seeing blue focus rings on buttons, it becomes muscle memory.