Keyboard Preferences

Peter 24Oct13: ToDo-2 This draft page is now ready, I think, for editorial review and merciless editing. This was the strawman that created earlier to document the new interface.

Keyboard Preferences sets the keyboard shortcuts which can be used for numerous commands in Audacity as an alternative to using Menus, Toolbars or mouse gestures.

Audacity comes supplied with a default set of shortcut bindings but these can be added to, changed or removed here if desired.

Accessed by: Edit > Preferences > Keyboard    (on a Mac Audacity > Preferences > Keyboard)

Click on any of the other Preferences sections in the above image to go directly to that Preferences page.

Image map entry for Modules parked here:

rect 32 288 122 303 Modules Preferences

A full list of the commands with their default key bindings is available at Keyboard Shortcut Reference.

View by

There are three ways of viewing the shortcut keys or "bindings" which you can select by clicking on the appropriate radio button. The view chosen when you click OK to close Preferences is remembered when you access Keyboard Preferences next time.

Tree

This is the default view. It lists all the commands to which keyboard shortcuts can be attached, together with their currently allocated shortcut or "binding" (if any). The commands are grouped then listed within each group in the same order in which they appear in the Audacity Menu Bar. If a group of items are in a sub-menu within their Menu Bar, that group appears in the tree indented to right as a sub-group within their group. There is a final "Command" category listed in alphabetical order for commands which do not have a Menu Bar entry.

The menu groups and sub-groups ("branches" in this "tree" view) always open fully expanded. You can click on any branch's  -  icon to collapse the branch. Any branch which is collapsed can be expanded by clicking on its  +  icon.

Keyboard use:

• Use Left arrow when on a group or sub-group's title row to collapse the group or sub-group, or when on an item in an expanded group or sub-group to jump to the title row of that group or sub-group.
• Use Right arrow to expand a collapsed group or sub-group.
• Up arrow and Down arrow navigate up and down the items in "Tree" view and also do so in the "Name" and "Key" views.

Using the Search box in "Tree" view searches for the text you enter in a command or its shortcut. You can enter text in upper or lower case (search is not case-sensitive).

Search Examples:

• Entering zoom finds the four Zoom items in View Menu and the Zoom Tool command.
• Entering just z finds all menu items or commands that include the letter z, plus shortcuts that include Z.
• Entering +j finds only shortcuts that include a modified "J", so by default CTRL + J, CTRL + ALT + J, ALT + J, ALT + SHIFT + J and SHIFT + J.

If you have non-default shortcuts and press the Defaults button as below to restore the default shortcut set, the search results for your entered text will be updated. Empty the text in the Search box to restore the complete Tree list.

Name

This view lists the commands in alphabetical order with the command on the left.

This also has a Search box, as above this enables you to search for either a command or shortcut.

Key

This view lists the currently assigned shortcuts in alphabetical order with the shortcut on the left, followed by an alphabetic listing of all the commands that currently have no shortcut assigned to them. This view is perhaps the easiest one to use to ascertain which keys or key combinations are not currently assigned and in use.

This has a Hotkey box which enables you to search by shortcut.

Input box, Set and Clear buttons

• To change or add a binding:
  1. Click to select the item you want to change in the Command/Key combination window. The entry will be highlighted and the current key combination for that command (if any) will now appear in the input box to left of the Set button.
  2. Either click in the input box, or press TAB once to switch focus to it.
  3. Choose your binding by either holding any modifier key (or combination of modifiers) then pressing any non-modifier key, or press any non-modifier key on its own. Valid modifiers are:
     • SHIFT
     • CTRL ( CMND on a Mac)
     • ALT ( OPTION on a Mac)
     • ALTGR or Right ALT (on Windows keyboards, this key sends a combined CTRL + ALT modifier and can thus be used as an alternative to call any binding that includes CTRL + ALT).

     As an example, SHIFT + 6  or CTRL + SHIFT + P  are both valid bindings. Your chosen key or key combination will now replace the previous content of the input box. Note: you cannot set the main system shortcut for Escape (ESC on Windows or ALT + C on some Linux systems) as a binding.

  4. Click Set to apply your desired change. If your chosen key binding is already allocated to a command, Audacity will inform you and ask you if you want to go ahead (thus removing the original binding).

• Clear: To remove a binding, select the item as above, then press Clear.

Export..., Import... and Defaults buttons

• Export... and Import...: You can export and import key bindings (for example to keep a safe copy of your custom settings, or to transfer them to Audacity on another machine). Export... exports your bindings as an XML file, and Import... imports the XML file back again. You can also edit the XML file in any text editor and re-import it, as an alternative to editing the key bindings in Preferences.

Audacity does not check for bindings which are allocated to more than one command when importing the file, so edit carefully.

The only entries you can usefully edit are the actual key bindings themselves which are in the "key" string at the end of each command. For example, to set the key binding for "New" to SHIFT + N, the command in the XML file should read:

<command name="New" label="New" key="Shift+N"/>

Be sure not to delete the closing "/>" characters at the end of the command.

• Defaults: Clicking the Defaults button reverts all bindings to those when you first obtained Audacity. This button is handy if you decide you have not got your changes right and want to start over again.

OK and Cancel buttons

• OK: When you have completed your edits press the OK button to save the new bindings and exit the dialog.
• Cancel: If you press the Cancel button this aborts the editing and all bindings will remain as they were before you started to edit them and the dialog will be exited.