I'm so sorry if this has been asked before. Maybe I'm not using the right terminology. Is there a way to have a keyboard shortcut that pulls up the contextual menu of whatever file is selected in the front-most Finder window? [Nov-24-2021 23-16-23] In this gif I'm using the keyboard to scroll/nav…

[image] davidt: How do I skip from having to use navigate my mouse on a item that is already selected? Hey David, This should be an utter no-brainer, but as usual Apple falls short when it comes to providing for users' convenience. [welbo] How do I open the context men…

Chris, thanks so much. This is a juicy one. I'm gonna dive in. I'll report back :slight_smile:

@ccstone phew I very much appreciate the variety of links and solid content. It's probably way over my head for the little time I have. Though I was tempted to head into the world of keybindings. Fascinating stuff. Reminds me of the fun days of tech. But this is just one of the battles i have wi…

[image] davidt: Is there a way to have a keyboard shortcut that pulls up the contextual menu of whatever file is selected in the front-most Finder window? Yes, for the Finder anyway, using AppleScript. And for all other Apps using Keyboard Maestro's Move to Found Image Action to move and righ…

hey @Zabobon thanks so much! Trying the finder/applescript one first: I'm getting this error when i call your finder macro: "System Events got an error: Can’t get splitter group 1 of window "Documents" of application process "Finder". Invalid index." I've dug into your AS but can't see anything I …

[image] davidt: I've dug into your AS but can't see anything I wand to tinker with. Maybe you have an idea? The AppleScript is just pasted into the Keyboard Maestro Action as was. It's a script that has been around for a while now. All I can say is it works fine for me (which is not much hel…

[image] Zabobon: First the AppleScript approach (this AppleScript is from @eurobubba … Agh – I think I've seen that before and forgotten... In any case – on my system it's too slow to be realistically useful – 3+ seconds to run. The appended macro gets the time down to about 0.5 seconds on …

[image] Zabobon: It can usually work pretty well - but like I said it's a shame Apple don't just allow us to set a key to do this. Actually, you can get macOS to do this for you. But there's a price. You have to enable Voice Control in System Preferences, and then simply say "Right Click". Ob…

[image] ccstone: The appended macro gets the time down to about 0.5 seconds Great! I was hoping you would come up with a more efficient AppleScript! [image] ccstone: on my system it's too slow to be realistically useful – 3+ seconds to run. You are going to so love getting your new Ma…

[image] davidt: I've dug into your AS but can't see anything I wand to tinker with. Maybe you have an idea? As you've probably seen already, @ccstone has come up with another more efficient AppleScript (a couple of posts above). - hope that works for you. (I've tested for myself and it works…

Open the Finder Contextual Menu Via the Keyboard

Questions & Suggestions

skillet June 12, 2026, 7:32pm 14

So now that Apple has a keyboard that has this which is in place of the old global or function key is there a way with the key stroke command to use this currently? I don't see that as an option in Keyboard Maestro.

I'm curious if control return is the exact same thing that dedicated key is doing behind the scenes.

Open the Finder Contextual Menu Via the Keyboard

Options