Pressing space bar opens model info, instead of activating the select tool

Using SU for Mac. Sometimes pressing the space bar activates the select tool. However often times it opens the model info window. I saw this post that recommended changing the keyboard settings (not practical for me, as i use the keyboard to navigate quite a bit), but even that did not work. Any ideas?

Disabling ‘Full Keyboard Access’ on all controls in System Preferences is still the best way to disable this permanently but otherwise look for the blue highlight on the model info icon in the lower left corner of SketchUp. If you press Tab four times you will see the hightlight move to the Select tool in the toolbar and pressing space will now always give you the select tool.


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I currently have full keyboard access disabled. Still having the issue. Also, I see the icon you’re talking about. Pressing tab does not seem to do anything.

Ahhh okay, I had to re-enable full controls, and then do the tab trick. Thank you!!!

I have struggled with this as well since I like to have full keyboard access set to ‘all controls’ so I can use the keyboard as much as possible without having to reach for the mouse.

I guess a possible permanent solution would be if our dear friends at Trimble could set the ‘Select Tool’ to be the default highlighted icon instead of the model info icon when SketchUp launches. So hopefully they’re listening in on this post… :wink:

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I realize that it was a while ago that the last comment was posted, but I just spent too much time fixing this myself. The really frustrating part to me was that the space bar would seem to change its function randomly. I have no idea why it would work as a select shortcut sometimes and the Model Info other times when I did not change it. And closing the file, then reopening it would occasionally change the function back to the Select Tool.

I agree that the proper solution is to make the shortcut behave as the user sets it in the SketchUp Preferences. It is not a good idea to have to change a setting in the Mac Preferences since that affects other programs’ functions.

I agree in principle, but since the OS gets control of key presses before SketchUp ever sees them the System Preferences will always dominate over anything SketchUp tries to do!

Follow the subtle blue halo… it tells you what the space bar will do. PC’s do a bit of the same thing on save panels (Enter key to save, space bar to discard), you just need to train your eye to look for it.

I have suffered with this for years! I also heavly use keyboard shortcuts so doing without was not an option. Could never figure out what was causing it to intermittently switch… evidently it was an errant keystroke.

:fist_right:TAB :fist_left: to the rescue! So glad I happened upon this post… thank you!