Is there a way to make alt-f and alt-b jump word forward and backward instead of printing ƒ and ∫ on Mac?

Question

I understand that Mac has some Emacs keybindings enabled by default (e.g. Ctrl+A move to beginning of line etc.). If I open TextEdit for example I can navigate like in Emacs.

But when I try Alt+F or Alt+b for move to next word or last word it does not work. It prints out ƒ and ∫ instead.

Is there a way to jump words instead?

I think that I did not tinker with the keybindings and I use the US layout on a german keyboard.

Answer 1

Maybe one of these helps? (I don't use OSX myself, so I can't test anything).

• http://blog.sensible.io/2012/10/19/mac-os-x-emacs-style-keybindings-everywhere.html
• http://aufflick.com/blog/2006/01/10/emacs-keybindings-everywhere

Summary from first URL:

Create file ~/Library/Keybindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict with the following content and restart all apps.

{ "~d" = "deleteWordForward:"; "^w" = "deleteWordBackward:"; "~f" = "moveWordForward:"; "~b" = "moveWordBackward:"; }