There's a quiet frustration that builds when you've done everything right, and the machine still won't cooperate. That's exactly where this reader finds themselves: they've located the filter command, assigned a custom keyboard shortcut through macOS settings, confirmed the key combination appears in the context menu, and then watched it do absolutely nothing. It's not a lack of effort or understanding. It's a classic case of the system saying one thing while doing another, and it's worth pausing on because it reveals something important about how we interact with tools we rely on daily.
The most likely culprit here is a mismatch between what macOS thinks it's assigning and what the application is actually listening for. When you create a shortcut under System Settings, you're telling the operating system to intercept that key combination and send a menu command to the frontmost app. But if the app's menu item uses a different internal identifier, or if the shortcut conflicts with an existing system-wide or app-specific binding, the OS can display the shortcut next to the command while never actually firing it. The fact that the shortcut appears in the context menu suggests the app is receiving the assignment, but the execution path is broken somewhere between the keypress and the filter action. It's not that the user is doing something wrong; it's that the abstraction layer between macOS and the app is imperfect.
What does this mean for you, practically? It means the shortcut you see in the menu is not a promise, it's a suggestion. Before abandoning the idea, test whether the shortcut works from a clean state, without other apps running, and check if a different combination (like Control+Option+F) behaves any better. Also, try using the menu directly after assigning the shortcut, then restart the app to force it to reload its menu configuration. If that still fails, the issue may be that the app's menu item is not properly exposed to the Accessibility or Input Monitoring APIs, which macOS requires for third-party shortcuts to function reliably. In that case, the solution is not more fiddling, but a different approach: use a third-party tool like BetterTouchTool or Karabiner-Elements to remap the key at a lower level, or simply accept that some commands are better left to the mouse.
The deeper takeaway is that custom shortcuts on macOS are a powerful idea with fragile execution. They work beautifully when the app plays along, and they fail silently when it doesn't. Don't let this one dead end convince you that the filter command itself is out of reach. Instead, treat this as a reminder that productivity tools are only as good as the paths they provide to your most frequent actions. If the shortcut won't cooperate, build a different path: add the filter command to the toolbar, use a Quick Action, or simply memorize the sequence of clicks that gets you there fastest. The goal is not to win a battle against the operating system; it's to get the filter applied with the least resistance. And if that means clicking twice instead of pressing a key, so be it. Just don't waste another hour fighting a shortcut that was never really yours to own.