Page Up and Page Down on a Mac Keyboard

MacBook keyboards have no Page Up or Page Down keys, but the functions are one modifier away: Fn+Up is Page Up and Fn+Down is Page Down. Here's the whole paging cluster — including the difference between scrolling the view and moving the cursor, which trips up everyone arriving from Windows.

The core shortcuts

• Fn+Up — Page Up: scroll up one screenful.
• Fn+Down — Page Down: scroll down one screenful.
• Fn+Left — Home: scroll to the very top of the document or page.
• Fn+Right — End: scroll to the very bottom.

On newer MacBooks the Fn key doubles as the 🌐 globe key — same key, same behavior. Full-size external keyboards, including Apple's Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, have dedicated page up / page down / home / end keys that do exactly the same thing. There's nothing to enable in Settings — these combos work out of the box in every scrollable view on the Mac.

Scrolling the view vs moving the cursor

Here's the part that surprises Windows switchers: on macOS, the paging keys scroll the view but leave the insertion point where it was. Page down through a document, press an arrow key, and you snap straight back to where the cursor still sits. On Windows, Page Down moves the cursor with you.

When you want the cursor to actually travel, use the Cmd shortcuts instead:

• Cmd+Up — move the cursor to the start of the document.
• Cmd+Down — move the cursor to the end of the document.
• Cmd+Left / Cmd+Right — start and end of the current line.
• Add Shift to any of these to select the text you jump over.

Some apps blur the line — a few editors move the caret on paging, and Option combined with the paging keys moves the insertion point in many native apps — but scroll-without-moving is the default across macOS.

Browser paging tricks

In Safari, Chrome, and Firefox you don't even need Fn:

• Space — scroll down one screenful (as long as the cursor isn't in a text field).
• Shift+Space — scroll back up one screenful.
• Cmd+Up / Cmd+Down — jump to the top or bottom of the page.

The spacebar is the most comfortable Page Down on the platform — most longtime Mac users read the entire web with it.

Paging through PDFs and previews

The same keys carry over to documents you're reading rather than editing:

• Preview: Fn+Up and Fn+Down move a screenful at a time; with the sidebar in thumbnail view, plain Up/Down arrows step page by page. Cmd+Up and Cmd+Down jump to the first and last page.
• Quick Look: select a file in Finder, press Space to preview it, then use the arrow keys — Up/Down scroll the preview, Left/Right move between selected files. Press Space again to close.
• Anything scrollable: if a window scrolls, Fn+Up/Fn+Down page it — Mail messages, Notes, System Settings panes, chat histories. Click once inside the area you want to page first, so the keystrokes go to the right pane.

One habit worth stealing from longtime Mac users: for anything longer than a couple of screenfuls, paging beats trackpad scrolling because each press moves exactly one screen — you never lose your place mid-paragraph the way you can with momentum scrolling.

The rest of the navigation cluster

Home and End have their own quirks on macOS — they scroll without moving the cursor too, and they can be remapped to behave like Windows. See fix Home and End keys on Mac.