A fix for broken TextMate arrow keys in Snow Leopard

Friday, 28 August 2009 • Permalink

Update: The latest TextMate update has a fix for this issue. Use the Software Update tab in TextMate’s Preference Pane to get it (you might need to change “Watch For” to “Cutting-Edge” in order to see it). If you’ve already taken the steps below, the new version will still work just fine.

TextMate’s command-left/right arrow key functionality (one of the most commonly used keystrokes) is broken in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Fortunately’ there’s a fix. Edit (or create) the file named ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict and add the following lines to the end:

"@\UF702" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; 
"@\UF703" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; 
"$@\UF702" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; 
"$@\UF703" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";

Quit and re-launch TextMate, and your precious key-combo should be working again. There’s also a Snow Leopard Compability Bundle which does, essentially, the same thing.

Check out this MacroMates bug report for the source of these handy fixes.