Making the tech in your life work for you

Using Keyboard Shortcuts from the Save As Dialog Box on your Mac

September 10, 2014 by Roger Hyttinen

Save as dialog box mac

There are several shortcuts that you can use from the Save As dialog box (also called “Save Sheets”) from within an application. This means no more having to go to your mouse or trackpad to choose the destination folder when saving files.

Choose File ➪ Save As from the menu and then choose from the following commands:

Switch to your Desktop: ⌘ + D
Switch to your Home Folder: ⌘ + ⇧ + H
Specify a folder: ⌘ + ⇧ + H and then type the path of the folder (for example: Dropbox/Writing/Articles)
Cancel the operation: ⌘.

To automate even further, I have added keyboard shortcuts to my favorite folders in the Default Folder X application, which I can then use from the Save As dialog box. For instance, I use the keyboard shortcut control + d for Dropbox, control + g for Google Drive, control + w for my writing folder, etc. I wrote about Default Folder X in a previous post. This is an excellent example of using automation with that application.

You can also create keyboard shortcuts using Keyboard Maestro and then use them to switch to specific folders from the Save As dialog box.