Mac OS X: Remapping “Home” and “End” keys

Update august 4th 2011: Behaviour slightly pooped since Lion (Mac OS X 10.7). Now Home and End act as a back and forward button respectively, unless the cursor is within a text field in your browser.

Nothing I tried worked until I installed KeyRemap4MacBook (http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook).

This installs to your preference pane and the option is found under “For PC Users” and is called “Use PC Style Home/End”.

Everything below this point is useless, and only saved for luls.

This is how I altered ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict to change the behaviour of the Home and End keys in Mac OS X 10.6.8. (The directory and file did not exist so I had to create them manually.)

{
/* Remap Home / End to be correct :-) */
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* Home */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* End */
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Home */
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + End */
"^\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfDocument:"; /* Ctrl + Home */
"^\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfDocument:"; /* Ctrl + End */
"$^\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfDocumentAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Ctrl + Home */
"$^\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfDocumentAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Ctrl + End */
}

Copied from http://evansweb.info/2005/03/24/mac-os-x-and-home-end-keys

Mac OS X and Home / End keys

Posted by Jon Evans 24/03/2005 at 14h41

The default key bindings for the home and end keys in Mac OS X are different to any other operating system I’ve ever used. By default, they seem to be bound to the viewport, rather than the line of text you are editing. In a multi-line document, the Home key scrolls up to the top of the document, and the End key scrolls down to the bottom. In each case the caret stays where it was.

As a programmer I find this behaviour to be just plain wrong— I want Home and End to move to the start and end of the current line.

I have found a way to “fix” this problem by editing the default keybindings file,~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict. Create the directory and / or the file if they’re not already there, and make it look like this:

{
        /* Remap Home / End to be correct :-) */
        "\UF729"  = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";                   /* Home         */
        "\UF72B"  = "moveToEndOfLine:";                         /* End          */
        "$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Home */
        "$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";       /* Shift + End  */
}

If there are already entries in DefaultKeyBinding.dict, just add the 4 new mappings above to the main section of your file.

Other more or less relevant sources:

• http://lifehacker.com/225873/mac-switchers-tip–remap-the-home-and-end-keys
• http://www.starryhope.com/tech/2006/mac-os-x-home-and-end-keys/
• http://www.starryhope.com/tech/apple/2006/keyfixer/ (comments)