Quick shut down key

Miss the “opposite corners” shutdown keyboard shortcut on your new Mac aluminium keyboard? ProSutdown restores it.

Since the eject button has been moved from the top right to the center of your keyboard, ProShutdown replaces it with the F19 key, so you can still use “opposite corners” to quickly shutdown your Mac. Pressing CTRL + F19 once ProShutdown is launched will bring up the shut down window. To make it work you need to make sure that ProShutdown is runnng , which you can quickly see from the menu bar.

You’ll still be able to use CTRL + Eject but obviously it won’t feel as natural as what ProShutdown offers. Overall though, ProShutdown is a fairly basic tool and will only real appeal to those of you that miss “opposite corners” shutdown. It’s a shame that the tool doesn’t let you customize keyboard shortcut for shutdown.

ProShutdown is a simple tool to bring back “opposite corners” shutdown on your new aluminium Mac keyboard. Not essential but some users will be glad it’s there.

Mac OS X has a nifty shortcut – Ctrl+Eject – for shutting down your computer. On older Apple keyboards, these keys are on opposite diagonal corners of the keyboard, and at the end of the day you can simply hit the two corners of the keyboard then Return to switch off your computer. However, with the new Apple Aluminium Keyboard, the eject key in in the middle of the top row of keys – hardly as convenient! Instead, F19 takes the top right spot.

ProShutdown is a free program that restores the “opposite corners” shortcut by listening for Ctrl+F19, and displaying a shut down dialog when these are pressed. It displays a small “F19” icon in the menu bar to remind you that this shortcut is available. Want it gone? Press Ctrl+F18 to hide (or bring back) the icon.