Keyboard shortcut for moving to the first or last item in a Finder list

Posted by David Chin on May 12th, 2008 in Shortcuts

In my move to the Mac platform, I wish there was a way to quickly move to the top or bottom of a list of items in a Finder window.

The way you’d do it in a PC / Windows environment is just to hit the Home or End key.

On the iMac, there are Home and End keys, but they only scroll to the first or last item without moving the cursor to focus on those items.

On the MacBook Pro, you don’t get to have those keys at all.

There’s a workaround I use, but it only works with the Finder in List view.

Next, use the Option key in conjunction with either the Up or Down arrow key.

Say your cursor is currently on the the first item in the Finder window.

To move the cursor to the last item, simply hit Option + Down Arrow.

To move the cursor to the top of the list again, just press Option + Up Arrow.