How to Find Conflicting Keyboard Shortcuts on Mac
Keyboard shortcuts that silently fail are almost always conflicts. Here is every way to find them on macOS — the manual methods, their limits, and the one-scan approach.
You press ⌘⇧5 and nothing happens. Or the wrong thing happens — a screenshot tool fires when you wanted your screen recorder. Both apps look correctly configured. Nothing crashed. The shortcut just went somewhere else.
That is a keyboard shortcut conflict, and macOS gives you almost no help finding it. This guide covers every way to track one down: the manual methods first, with honest estimates of how long they take, then the one-scan approach.
Why shortcut conflicts happen on macOS
Three separate systems hand out keyboard shortcuts on a Mac, and none of them talk to each other:
- macOS itself. Spotlight, Mission Control, screenshots, input source switching — all stored in the symbolic hotkeys plist and editable in System Settings.
- Apps with global hotkeys. Launchers (Raycast, Alfred), clipboard managers, window managers, screenshot tools. These register system-wide hotkeys that work no matter which app is focused.
- Per-app menu shortcuts. Every menu item in every running app can carry a shortcut, and they only apply while that app is frontmost.
Add automation layers like Karabiner-Elements or skhd, which remap keys before any app sees them, and a typical power-user Mac has several hundred bindings in play. A real scan of a working machine found 736 shortcuts across 10+ running apps — and 114 of them collided.
Who wins when two apps claim the same combo
The precedence rules explain the symptoms you see:
- Global hotkeys beat menu shortcuts. If Raycast registers ⌘⇧G globally, Finder’s “Go to Folder” menu item never receives that keystroke, even when Finder is frontmost. The event is consumed before the app gets it.
- Between two global hotkeys, the last one registered usually wins. That is why a shortcut that worked for months dies the day you install or update some unrelated utility — the new app grabbed the combo on launch.
- Remapping tools sit in front of everything. A Karabiner rule rewrites the keystroke before either of the above even applies.
The practical consequence: a conflict is rarely visible in either app’s settings. Each app shows its own binding as correctly configured. The collision only exists in the union of all of them — which is exactly what macOS never shows you.
The manual methods (and their limits)
1. System Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts
Open System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts. macOS marks conflicts among its own shortcuts with a yellow warning triangle — for example, if you bind two system functions to the same combo.
The limit: this pane only knows about macOS’s built-in shortcuts. It has no idea Raycast exists, never mind your Karabiner config. Since most real conflicts involve at least one third-party app, the pane stays clean while your shortcuts are broken.
Effort: 2 minutes. Catches: system-vs-system conflicts only.
2. Auditing each app’s settings one by one
Open every app that registers hotkeys — launcher, clipboard manager, window manager, screenshot tool, screen recorder, password manager, note-capture tool — and write down every global hotkey from each preferences pane. Then compare the list against the combo that’s misbehaving.
This works, but the numbers are against you. With 8–10 hotkey-capable apps, expect 30–60 minutes of clicking through settings panes, and you still miss anything defined in ~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json or ~/.config/skhd/skhdrc, plus all the menu shortcuts you didn’t think to check.
Effort: 30–60 minutes per audit. Catches: whatever you remember to check.
3. Binary search by quitting apps
The classic debugging move: quit half your running apps, test the shortcut, and keep halving until the thief reveals itself. Reliable, but slow — with 16 background apps you need four or five rounds of quit-test-relaunch, and login items plus menu bar agents (some of which don’t show in the Dock) make the candidate list longer than it looks.
Effort: 10–20 minutes per conflict, repeated for every conflict. Catches: one conflict at a time.
The one-scan way: HotkeyClash
HotkeyClash is a free, open-source (GPL-2.0) menu bar utility for macOS 14+ that does the entire audit in one pass. It scans three sources:
- Every running app’s menu bar shortcuts, read via the Accessibility API
- Automation config files — Karabiner-Elements (
~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json) and skhd (~/.config/skhd/skhdrc) - macOS system shortcuts from the symbolic hotkeys plist — Mission Control, Spotlight, Screenshots, and the rest
Then it groups everything by key combination and flags any combo claimed two or more times. The reference scan above — 736 shortcuts, 114 conflicts — took 3.2 seconds. Everything runs locally: no telemetry, no accounts, no network access, zero external dependencies.
Setup in four steps
- Install. Grab the DMG from the download page and drag it to Applications.
- Grant Accessibility permission when prompted (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility). This is what lets HotkeyClash read other apps’ menu shortcuts. Without it, the scan still covers config files and system shortcuts, but skips running apps’ menus.
- Scan. Click the menu bar icon or press ⌘⇧H, the default global hotkey.
- Read the results by severity:
- Definite (red): two global hotkeys on the same combo. Guaranteed clash — only one can ever fire. Fix these first.
- Potential (amber): a global hotkey overlapping a per-app menu shortcut. It only bites when that app is frontmost, which is exactly the kind of “works sometimes” bug that drives people crazy.
How to actually fix a conflict once you’ve found it
HotkeyClash deliberately does not edit or reassign shortcuts — rewriting other apps’ settings behind their backs is how you end up with new mysteries. Instead, you change the binding in whichever app’s own settings you’d rather modify:
- Raycast: Raycast Settings → General → “Raycast Hotkey” for the main launcher key, or Settings → Extensions for per-command hotkeys. Click the recorder field and press the new combo.
- macOS system shortcuts: System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → pick the category (Screenshots, Mission Control, Spotlight…) → double-click the current combo and press a new one, or untick the checkbox to disable it entirely.
- Karabiner-Elements: edit the rule in Karabiner-Elements’ settings or directly in
karabiner.json, then let it reload. - Most other apps: look for a “Hotkey”, “Shortcuts”, or “Recording” section in the app’s preferences.
A good rule of thumb: change the binding in the app you use the shortcut for least, or move the lower-priority app to a combo with an extra modifier (⌃⌥⌘ combos are almost always free). Then re-scan to confirm the combo now appears exactly once.
If your shortcut already stopped working and you’re diagnosing after the fact, the step-by-step troubleshooting checklist walks the same ground from the symptom side.
Common conflict-prone combos
These combinations show up in conflict reports constantly, because popular utilities all gravitate toward the same “good” shortcuts:
| Combo | macOS default | Frequently claimed by |
|---|---|---|
| ⌘Space | Spotlight | Alfred, Raycast, input source switching |
| ⌘⇧5 | Screenshot/recording toolbar | CleanShot X, other capture tools |
| ⌘⇧4 | Area screenshot | CleanShot X, Shottr, Monosnap |
| ⌘⇧G | Finder “Go to Folder”, “Find Previous” in many apps | Launchers, GIF/capture tools |
| ⌘⇧V | ”Paste and Match Style” in many apps | Clipboard managers |
| ⌃Space | Input source switching | IDE autocomplete (Xcode, JetBrains), launchers |
| ⌘⌥Space | Finder search window | Alfred (legacy default), launchers |
| ⌘⇧D | ”Send” in Mail, “Desktop” in Finder dialogs | Window managers, note tools |
If a shortcut in this table is misbehaving on your Mac, odds are very good a scan will show two claimants within seconds.
The bottom line
You can find a Mac shortcut conflict manually — System Settings for system-vs-system collisions, an app-by-app audit, or binary search by quitting apps — but you’ll spend somewhere between 10 minutes and an hour per incident, and you’ll only ever find the one conflict you were hunting. A full scan with HotkeyClash takes about three seconds, covers menu shortcuts, config files, and system hotkeys in one pass, and shows every collision on the machine, ranked by severity. Fix the red ones, skim the amber ones, re-scan, done.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find the shortcut conflict on my Mac?
Manually, you check System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts for yellow warning triangles, then open every hotkey app's preferences one by one. The faster way is a conflict scanner like HotkeyClash, which reads every running app's menu shortcuts, your Karabiner/skhd config files, and macOS system shortcuts in one pass, then lists every key combination claimed more than once.
Does macOS warn me about keyboard shortcut conflicts?
Only partially. System Settings shows a yellow warning triangle when two of its own built-in shortcuts collide, but it knows nothing about third-party apps like Raycast, Alfred, CleanShot, or Karabiner-Elements. Most real-world conflicts involve a third-party app, so macOS never flags them.
Why does my keyboard shortcut do nothing on Mac?
The most common reason is that another app registered the same combination as a global hotkey. Global hotkeys intercept the keystroke before the frontmost app ever sees it, so the shortcut appears dead even though both apps are configured correctly on their own.
What is the difference between a definite and a potential shortcut conflict?
A definite conflict is two global hotkeys bound to the same combo — only one can win, every time, regardless of which app is focused. A potential conflict is a global hotkey overlapping an app's menu shortcut — it only bites when that specific app is frontmost.
Can HotkeyClash fix conflicts automatically?
No, by design. HotkeyClash detects and groups conflicts but does not edit other apps' settings — silently rewriting another app's hotkeys would be fragile and surprising. You fix the conflict in whichever app's own settings you prefer to change, and a re-scan confirms it is resolved.
Related reading
Why Your Mac Keyboard Shortcut Stopped Working (And How to Fix It)
A seven-step diagnosis checklist for dead shortcuts, from hotkey theft to stuck modifiers.
MigrationShortcutDetective Is Dead. Here's the Modern Alternative
The classic conflict-finder no longer runs on modern macOS. What to use instead.