Keyboard Preferences

This preferences screen is used to set up the correspondence between keyboard key combinations and commands in Audacity. These are known as 'Key bindings'.

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How to Change Key Bindings

To set a new binding

• Click in the text box to the left of the 'Set' button.
• Press a key-combination such as Ctrl and Shift and R. The text box will show Ctrl+Shift+R.
• Now click on the command in the scrollable list that you would like to be bound to Ctrl+Shift+R
• Now click on the 'Set' button. The binding will be set.

To clear an existing binding

• On the list of commands, click on the binding you want to clear.
• Click the 'Clear' button. The binding will be cleared.

Other Options

The remaining buttons on this preferences tab are:

• Defaults use this to restore the key bindings to their defaults.
• Save... to save the current key bindings to an xml file.
• Load... to load previously saved key bindings from an xml file.

See Keyboard Shortcut Reference for the default key bindings.

Keyboard

• Commands/Key Combination List
  All commands in Audacity that can be triggered by a keyboard shortcut are listed here. Click on the shortcut and the assigned keystroke is highlighted in the command/shortcut list. Click on the "Clear" button to erase the keystroke assigned to the function selected in the Commands column.
• Adding new shortcuts/changing shortcuts
  Click on the command in the list. Click in to the field next to the "Set" button and press any key or combination of command key(Shift,CTRL,ALT) and alphanumeric key(everything else). The description of that key or key combo will appear in the field or replace the existing keystroke. By clicking on the "Set" button, you can add or change this key or key combo as a shortcut to the function selected in the Commands list.
• Saving your setup You can export your keyboard shortcut settings for safekeeping or to import into audacity on another machine. Use Save... to save you settings to a file, Load... to load a saved settings file, and Defaults to restore the default audacity settings.

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Edit or Create Keyboard Shortcuts

Where?

In the preferences dialog, go to the keyboard section or edit the keyboard configuration file directly with a text editor. You will find this file in the directory where you installed Audacity. Its filename is Audacity-keys.xml .

Audacity will NOT load this keymap upon startup, but save them in the registry(Windows). Should you make changes to the Audacity.xml file with a text editor, you'll need to load that shortcut file with the "Load" button to make Audacity use them. Thus you can save your keymaps under any filename with an XML extension and keep different keymaps around for different purposes.

Audacity will NOT store the current keymap in the file Audacity.xml. Should you want to make changes to the current keymap with a text editor, you'll have to use the "Save" button to save that keymap to an XML file first. After editing it you'll have to "Load" it again.

Editing and Creating Shortcuts with the Preferences Dialog

Changing a shortcut

1. Click on the command in the list. The command to be changed is now highlighted.
2. Click in to the box to left of the Set button. If a shortcut was assigned to the command previously, it will be displayed in this box.
3. Hit the key or key combination you wish to assign to this command. Then processed to the next step.
4. Click on the Set button to assign the chosen key or key combination to the chosen command.

Clearing a shortcut

1. Click on the command in the list. The command to be cleared is now highlighted.
2. Click on the clear button to clear the command.

Editing and Creating Shortcuts with a text editor

The keyboard shortcuts you were editing with the dialog are stored in a simple XML file. Thus, you can edit it with any text editor.

Each keyboard map starts with:

<audacitykeyboard audacityversion="1.2">

and ends with:

</audacitykeyboard>

Each command is defined with the command tag. An example :

<command
name="Undo"
label="Undo"
key="Ctrl+Z" />

• name: The command as Audacity understands it.
• label: Command description - as seen in the Preferences keyboard map editor.
• key: The shortcut key or key combination.