If you’re clever, you might think the title of this edition means I have 95 shortcuts to share. Not so. It was just my clever way of referring to the shortcuts for cut, copy, and paste while using only two words.

Have you noticed that all of the Mac Mondays titles to date have been exactly two words?

Cut, Copy & Paste on a Mac

Apple has offered keyboard shortcuts on the Mac since the very beginning. The company has also consistently shown available shortcuts right next to their assigned commands in application menus.

Three of the most common shortcuts are for the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands. On a conventional QWERTY keyboard, they are conveniently next to each other: Command+X, Command+C, and Command+V.

If an application has an Edit menu, you can find these three commands near the top of it. And once you discover the keyboard shortcuts, you can start using them immediately, even while the menu is still open.

Cut, Copy & Paste on an iDevice

Did you know these commands are also available on an iOS device? Since iOS 3, when the commands were introduced, it has been possible to select some text and see a menu with Cut and Copy commands.

After some text has has been cut or copied, thereby placing it on the Clipboard, it can be pasted. Place the cursor by tapping the screen and/or dragging it to the desired location. If necessary, tap the screen again to reveal the Paste command.

Or, if you have an external keyboard you use with your iDevice, you can use the normal Mac keyboard shortcuts as described above. And if you use your iDevice near your Mac, you might like 1Keyboard, which enables you to use your Mac’s keyboard for both devices.

Finally, if you’re signed into your Apple ID on multiple devices, you can use Universal Clipboard to copy and paste from one device to the next.

New Gestures

iOS 13 introduced a series of multi-finger gestures for these common commands. Honestly, I find some of them challenging to use on my iPhone SE’s small screen, but they’re easier to access on the larger displays of most modern iPhones and iPads.

Here’s how it works:

  1. First select some text. That is, double-tap and hold to select a word and then drag the handles to expand the selection, or double-tap and drag to select all the text you drag over.
  2. Place three fingers on the screen and pinch them together to copy the text (to the clipboard). If the text is editable, you can repeat this gestures to cut the text instead.
  3. To paste, reverse the gesture: Place three fingers on the screen and spread them apart.
  4. You can also tap with three fingers to get a menu with all available editing commands.

With all these new shortcuts, perhaps we will get to 95. Just not today. More coming in November!

Is there an action you feel is difficult or impossible to do on your iPhone or iPad? Let me know and perhaps I’ll reveal an easier way.