Tab Through Checkboxes and Radio Buttons in Safari

This problem has been driving me nuts for years, and I’m slightly ashamed to admit I just realized it has an extremely simple fix.

It’s always bugged me that I could tab through every form field except checkboxes and radio buttons.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about let me explain. When filling out a form, it’s often much easier to press Tab to move to the next field. Unfortunately, OS X by default doesn’t allow you to focus on a checkbox or radio button with tab.

This means to select one of these, you have to grab your mouse and click. This is extremely annoying. You can try this out here.

But I stumbled on a setting in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts that allows you to select any form item:

Picture 15.png

Change this option to “All controls.” You can also toggle this setting by pressing Control+Fn+F7.

Now you can tab through all form fields, try the new behavior here.

Picture 16.png

To select a checkbox that is in focus, press the spacebar. To change a radio button, press up or down.

I certainly should have seen this before–I wonder what else is hiding in plain view I’ve missed?

Submitted on April 30, 2008 at 6:00 am - Tab Through Checkboxes and Radio Buttons in Safari was written by Brad Jasper - There have been 9 comments - Categorized in Easy Tips, Productivity Tips, Safari Tips, keyboard shortcuts

9 Responses to “Tab Through Checkboxes and Radio Buttons in Safari”

Matt Jones

great tip...I cannot tell you how long this has pissed me off while using os x! April 30th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Dylan Ryan

A very similar option is also available directly in the Safari preferences under the Advanced tab ("Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage"), and this also tells you that even with the option disabled, pressing option+tab will cycle the focus through all focusable elements.

The primary difference is that with the setting in Safari (either by checking it or hitting option+tab), standard links will also get focussed whereas with the System preference they do not. If both the System Preference and Safari's preference are set, Safari 'wins' and links are added to the focus cycle.

Personally, I just use the option+tab when I need it, since setting either preference gets confusing to me. For example, with the System Preference enabled, the radio buttons in the poll on the left sidebar f this website are added to the focus cycle, which is confusing if you tab out of the form and just hit tab a few times to try and cycle back into the top (rather than hitting shift+tab to go backwards through the focus tree). Safari's preference that also adds links to the mess makes it even more difficult to predictably tab around web pages, so I prefer the on-demand approach of just holding down option. Of course, with Safari's preference SET, holding option while tabbing reverts to the old behavior (text fields and lists only if the System preference is disabled, or everything but links if the system preference is enabled. Interestingly, the text under the option in Safari's preference is live and can detect changes to the system preference and always tells you, accurately, what holding option will do) April 30th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Brad Jasper

Thanks for the clarification Dylan, I didn't know Safari also had this setting.

I think that may be a better option. April 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Willie

Great! However, I have to use Firefox on my work computer and am denied access to the System Preferences. Is there any way I can do this there? Maybe the keyboard shortcut will work, but it's a desktop without the Fn key. Does anyone know the desktop keyboard shortcut?
P.S. I just found out Firefox does this by default, but am posting this anyway for others who may have this question April 30th, 2008 at 11:21 am
David Driessen

Great tip, this is really something that has annoyed me a lot, but aparently not enough to go look for a way around it.
Thanks a lot April 30th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Trackback

A couple of Leopard configuration tricks
[...] to this blog post, I found the option to make Tab move through “All Controls” in System Preferences | [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
DJ Trey

Bout time I find this tip...haha. July 26th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Trackback

Problems tabbing through checkboxes and radios in MacOSX Safari - Code Couch
[...] like to credit this “discovery” to Brad Jasper and Dylan Ryan at MacTips: Tips & Tricks - but the post is no longer available. Thanks for the heads-up [...]
November 1st, 2008 at 5:06 am
Tom

I'm ashamed to say that I've been struggling without this function for months and only today did I search for the solution. Thanks so much for the simple solution!! November 4th, 2008 at 2:06 pm