How to apply by default the style to the Cell instead of the selection?

Question

It's a bit tiresome repeating Ctrl+., or $\uparrow$, Shift+$\downarrow$ (in Mac), or grabbing the mouse to select the bracket every time one want to change the cell style.

As style commands on empty selections aren't even registered unless you type something following, do you Front End experts know if is there some hook, trick, option, shortcut, or configuration to effect the style application? Like this: if there's a non-empty selection, do as always; if the selection is empty, change the cell style.

Answer 1

I don't find it useful to have a shortcut for every specific action but I agree that automatic selection of the cell bracket is something that is needed very often.

So I keep

SelectionMove[SelectedNotebook[],All,Cell]

procedure in my joker.m file from Shortcuts` package. You can read how to use it in highlighted text in chosen brackets. Is there no keyboard command for this?

Now you can Ctrl+t and do with that cell whatever you need, delete, change style etc.

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Here is another topic related to customization of the FrontEnd in context of styling:

Create custom shortcut to change font color