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How to learn keyboard shortcuts and remember them

Lists of shortcuts are easy to find and hard to learn from. Reading two hundred key combinations does not put any of them in your fingers. Shortcuts are a habit, not knowledge, and habits are built a few at a time. This guide is about how.

Start from what you do, not from a list

Watch yourself work for ten minutes and notice what you do again and again with the mouse. Switching between two windows. Saving. Clicking in the address bar. Selecting a word to retype it. Each of those repeated actions is a candidate.

The best shortcuts to learn are the ones for things you do fifty times a day, not the clever ones you would use once a month. Saving two seconds fifty times a day is worth far more than saving a minute once a month.

Three at a time

1. Choose three shortcuts.
2. Write them on a sticky note and put it on the edge of the screen.
3. For one week, when you are about to do one of those three things with the mouse, stop and use the keys, even though it feels slower.
4. When you no longer look at the note, throw it away and write the next three.

The first two days are slower. That is normal: you are thinking about something you used to do without thought. By the end of the week the keys are automatic, and you have them for life.

A sensible order

Week 1: the clipboard and undo. Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, Ctrl + X, Ctrl + Z. If you already know these, skip ahead.

Week 2: windows. Alt + Tab to switch, Win + D for the desktop, Win + Left and Right arrows to place windows side by side.

Week 3: text. Ctrl + Left and Right arrows to move by word, Shift with them to select, Ctrl + Backspace to delete a word. See moving and selecting text.

Week 4: the browser. Ctrl + T, Ctrl + W, Ctrl + Shift + T, Ctrl + L. See the browser page.

After that: the program you spend most of your day in. Three at a time.

The guide to the 20 essential shortcuts covers the first four weeks.

How to find the shortcut for anything

You do not need a website for this. Programs tell you.

• Look at the menus. Most menus print the shortcut beside each command.
• Hover over a button. The small label that appears usually includes the shortcut in brackets.
• Press Alt in Office programs. Letters appear over the ribbon. Each command can be reached by pressing letters in turn.
• Search the commands. Many programs have a box for this: Alt + / in Google Docs and Sheets, Ctrl + Shift + P in VS Code, the Help menu's search box on a Mac. It shows the command and its keys.
• Press ? or Ctrl + / in web applications such as Gmail, YouTube and Google Docs to see their list.

Each time you use a menu for something, glance at the shortcut printed beside it. After a few glances you will try it.

Why shortcuts are worth the trouble

Speed is the obvious reason, and it is real: seconds saved, hundreds of times a day.

Attention is the better reason. Reaching for the mouse means looking away from what you were thinking about, finding the pointer, aiming and clicking. A shortcut happens without looking. Your eyes stay on the sentence or the figure.

Comfort matters too. Constant mouse movement, especially small precise movements, is tiring for the hand and wrist. Spreading the work across both hands on the keyboard is easier on the body.

Mistakes people make

Learning too many at once. Twenty shortcuts in an evening leaves you with none by the weekend.

Learning rare ones. A shortcut you use once a month will be forgotten between uses. Use the menu for those.

Giving up after a slow day. The slow phase lasts two or three days.

Awkward hand positions. If a combination makes you twist your wrist, use both hands: one for the modifier keys and one for the letter. Both Ctrl keys and both Shift keys exist for this reason.

Pressing in the wrong order. Hold the modifier keys, Ctrl, Alt, Shift or the Windows key, first. Then tap the letter. Then let go.

Not noticing where the cursor is. A shortcut acts on the window and the box that are active. Ctrl + A in the address bar selects the address, not the page.

When a shortcut does not work

1. Is the right window in front? Click it once.
2. Is the cursor in a text box that is taking the keys for itself?
3. On a laptop, does the key need Fn?
4. Has another program claimed the combination? Screen recorders, graphics drivers and chat programs often set system-wide shortcuts.
5. Is the keyboard layout or language different from the one the shortcut assumes?

If pressing several keys together is difficult

Windows and the Mac both have a feature called Sticky Keys, which lets you press the keys of a shortcut one after another instead of together: Ctrl, release, then C. On Windows it is under Settings, Accessibility, Keyboard, and pressing Shift five times offers to switch it on. On a Mac it is under System Settings, Accessibility, Keyboard. It was made for people who cannot hold two keys at once, and it is useful for anyone working one-handed.

Printing a page

Every program page on this site has a Print button that gives a compact sheet of its shortcuts. A printed page beside the keyboard for a fortnight is still one of the most effective ways to learn. Mark the three you are working on.

This is an independent reference site. It is not connected with Microsoft, Apple, Google or any other maker of the programs named here. Product names belong to their owners and are used only to say where a shortcut works. Programs change; if a shortcut does not work for you, check the program's own help.