These modifiers will help you play DOS games on a trackpad or one-button mouse:
Action | Shortcut |
---|---|
Click the right mouse button | Ctrl ⌃+click |
Click the left and right mouse buttons at once | Ctrl ⌃+Opt ⌥+click or three-finger tap on trackpad |
Lock/unlock the mouse from the window
This will also reveal the menu bar in full screen mode |
Cmd ⌘+click |
If these mouse shortcuts conflict with a game’s own controls, you can change them for that game from the Mouse Inspector.
Action | Shortcut |
---|---|
Send a function key to the game | Fn+F1–F12 |
Toggle the numeric keypad | Cmd+U or hold Fn |
Switch to/from full screen mode | Cmd ⌘+F |
Pause the emulation | Cmd ⌘+P or ![]() |
Fast-forward the emulation | Hold Cmd ⌘+Opt ⌥+⇢ or hold ![]() |
Speed up/slow down the emulation | Cmd ⌘+Opt ⌥+⇡/⇣ |
Switch to previous/next CD | Cmd ⌘+Shift ⇧+⇠/⇢ |
Take a screenshot | Cmd ⌘+Shift ⇧+S |
Skip the default program and start up at the DOS prompt | Hold Opt ⌥ while gamebox is loading |
Show/hide the Inspector panel | Cmd ⌘+I |
Additional keyboard shortcuts can be found alongside each item in Boxer’s application menus.
If a DOS program needs you to press a key on the numeric keypad, but your Mac’s keyboard doesn’t have one, then you can hold down Fn to make part of the keyboard act as a numpad:
The 7-8-9 numpad keys match up to the same numbers on the regular keyboard: you can use this to orient your fingers to the simulated numpad.
If you don’t want to keep Fn held down to access the numpad, you can also turn the numpad behaviour on or off with the
menu option. This will take effect until you toggle the option again.Mac keyboards adopt the F1–F12 keys as hotkeys to control volume, screen brightness and other system functions. To send those keys to the DOS game instead, hold down fn when you press the function key.
You can toggle this behaviour by turning on “Use all F1, F2 etc. keys as standard function keys” in OS X’s Keyboard Preferences.
Some OS X system hotkeys (like Ctrl ⌃+⇠/⇢ to switch Spaces) may overlap with the control schemes for DOS games and get in the way when playing.
To avoid such problems, Boxer will try to disable any conflicting hotkeys while you’re playing. To do this, it needs some extra accessibility permissions:
Boxer emulates an MS-DOS PC keyboard layout, and special characters (such as punctuation) are often in different places than where they’re labelled your Mac keyboard.
Try nearby keys and Shift ⇧-ed keys to find the character you’re looking for. On non-US keyboards, you can also hold down the right-hand Opt ⌥ key to access additional special characters.
Some keys found on DOS-era PC keyboards don’t exist at all on a Mac keyboard. If you have a game that needs such keys, you can send them using the
menu.