Pages 14.4 custom keyboard shortcut not working

Question

Pages 14.4 custom keyboard shortcut not working

A custom keyboard shortcut for Pages 14.4 that was working yesterday has stopped working. It was for viewing/hiding page thumbnails.

I did try restarting my MacBook; deleting the shortcut and re-adding it; tested the keys in another application (keys are fine); deleted the shortcut again and added another with the same function but with different characters. With each change, the shortcut showed as expected in the View dropdown menu.

I tried the original shortcut in another document than the one I was working on. The shortcut opened its thumbnail column but then would not hide it.

Can’t imagine what might be going on.

Any thoughts?

MacBook Pro M4 Pro, macOS Tahoe 26.1

Thanks.

MacBook Pro (M4 Pro, 2024)

Posted on Jan 1, 2026 2:14 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,356 points

Jan 2, 2026 5:28 AM in response to jeffrey in Astoria

You can assign a unique keyboard shortcut to that View menu > Page Thumbnails menu item. It will not act as a toggle to show/hide the thumbnails. If you set this keyboard shortcut while Pages is running, you will need to quit and relaunch Pages for they keyboard shortcut to work.

They keyword here is unique because otherwise, if the keyboard shortcut is defined elsewhere in Pages, yours will be ignored. If your pointer (and keyboard) focus are not on Pages, even with the Pages document open, nothing will happen unless that keyboard shortcut matches one assigned to the currently active application.

I just assigned ^T to my Page Thumbnail menu item and based on the above, it worked. The spelling of the menu item must be exactly as it appears on the View menu:

Tested: Pages v14.4, Tahoe v26.2.

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Answer 2

Jan 2, 2026 12:03 PM in response to jeffrey in Astoria

Thank you, VikingOSX.

With reference to your “. . .it will not act as a toggle to show/hide the thumbnails”, I’m wondering why the custom shortcut for Page Thumbnails wouldn’t work as a toggle for viewing and hiding. It seems to me that a custom shortcut for something that is “toggle-able” should toggle like these others: For example, the shortcuts for Show Inspector (Option-Command-I); Show Colors (Shift-Command-C); Show Comments Pane (Shift-Command-T); and Show Invisibles (Shift-Command-I) all work as toggles for showing and hiding. Is there a reason you know of why viewing the page thumbnails shouldn’t be toggle-able? Is there something that differentiates commands beginning with “Show” from other commands?

And by the way, I see there is a workaround: If the thumbnails are showing, then the keyboard shortcut for View>Document Only will close the thumbnails and then the Page Thumbnails shortcut will bring them back.It seems inelegant. With the thumbnails showing, even going back to the View dropdown menu and clicking on “✓Page Thumbnails” (i.e., with the thumbnails showing, the command is checked) does not close the thumbnails.

Any thoughts?

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