How to cancel a Command-Control-Space key from Mac OS X 10.9?

Question

How can I undo Command-Control-Space from Mac OS X 10.9?

This shortcut shows a table of special characters and conflicts with my Emacs key binding, and I could not disconnect it from System Preference->Keyboard->Shortcuts .

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can create your own keyboard shortcuts for most menu options in System Preferences. If the desired key combination gives priority to the default shortcut, which you do not use and cannot easily disable, just redefine it with a new, unobtrusive shortcut.

Open System Prefs / Keyboard / Shortcuts . Select App Shortcuts in the left pane. Switch the All Applications category triangle in the main window to point down (if it is not already open).

If an item named Emoji & Symbols * is shown there, then click its shortcut combination and enter a new shortcut (for example, option-shift-command-t, in this case).

If in the All Applications section there is no element named Emoji & Symbols , click the + button at the bottom, enter or copy-paste Emoji & Symbols , and then enter a new key combination (option-shift-command-, or something really). This will free the control-command-space combination for use as a custom shortcut elsewhere.

To remove your own shortcut, simply click to highlight it in the main window of this preference panel, and click the button below. The custom shortcut disappears and the default action resumes.

* Note. In versions older than Mac OS 10.10.3, the menu item is called Special Characters… instead of Emoji & Symbols .

Answer 2

I do not know how to disable this, but an alternative would be to create a shortcut for the application that you want to use. I created the Command-Control-Space shortcut for Chrome and now Command-Control-Space no longer creates a special character palette in Chrome.

otherwise you might be better off asking Apple Stackexchange

Answer 3

At least on OS X Sierra, Ctrl-Space seems to be the default binding for

Select previous input source

which is probably enabled by default if multiple input sources are activated. Unticking it @ System Prefs / Keyboard / Shortcuts / Input Sources frees up the shortcut for Emacs.