| C | boot from CD or DVD | |
| D | force the boot device to be the internal hard drive | |
| T | start up in FireWire/Thunderbolt target mode (the Mac temporarily becomes a very expensive external FireWire/Thunderbolt drive) | |
| X | force boot into Mac OS X (older Macs that dual-boot into OS 9 and X) | |
| N | boot from Network drive | |
| ⇧ | hold after power-up to boot into safe mode, hold after login to prevent startup items from opening | |
| mouse button | eject CD before booting normally | |
| ⌘ S | boot into single user mode; type exit when done | |
| ⌥ ⌘ O F | boot into the Open Firmware prompt | |
| ⌥ ⌘ P R | reset PRAM | |
| ⌥ ⌘ V | verbose boot; show the Unixy text goodness at boot time | |
| ⇧ ⌥ ⌘ ⌫ | bypass internal hard drive and boot from external drive or CD | |
| ⌥ | choose startup disk at boot time | |
| ⌘ . | when startup disk chooser is active, open the CD tray |
