Keyboard support
CKEditor 5 offers plenty of features to boost your productivity. One of them is support for keyboard shortcuts.
Keyboard support is enabled by default.
Below is a list of the most important keystrokes supported by CKEditor 5 and its features.
# Content editing
Action | PC | Mac |
---|---|---|
Copy | Ctrl + C | Cmd + C |
Paste | Ctrl + V | Cmd + V |
Paste plain text and inherit target formatting | Ctrl + Shift + V | Cmd + Shift + V |
Undo | Ctrl + Z | Cmd + Z |
Redo | Ctrl + Y Ctrl + Shift + Z |
Cmd + Y Cmd + Shift + Z |
Select all | Ctrl + A | Cmd + A |
Bold | Ctrl + B | Cmd + B |
Italic | Ctrl + I | Cmd + I |
Strikethrough | Ctrl + Shift + X | Cmd + Shift + X |
Underline | Ctrl + U | Cmd + U |
Link | Ctrl + K | Cmd + K |
Insert a hard break (a new paragraph) | Enter | |
Insert a soft break (a <br> ) |
Shift + Enter | |
Move out of link or inline code style | ← ← / → → | |
Revert autoformatting action | Backspace | |
Find in the document | Ctrl + F | Cmd + F |
When you select a widget (for example: image, table, horizontal line, etc.) | ||
Insert a new paragraph directly after a widget | Enter | |
Insert a new paragraph directly before a widget | Shift + Enter | |
Display the caret to allow typing directly before a widget | ↑ / ← | |
Display the caret to allow typing directly after a widget | ↓ / → | |
Inside a list | ||
Increase list item indent | Tab | |
Decrease list item indent | Shift + Tab | |
Nest the current list item (when in a list) | Tab | |
Check or clear a to-do list item | Ctrl + Enter | Cmd + Enter |
In a table cell | ||
Move the selection to the next cell | Tab | |
Move the selection to the previous cell | Shift + Tab | |
Insert a new table row (when in the last cell of a table) | Tab | |
Navigate through the table | ↑ / → / ↓ / ← |
# User interface and navigation
Use the following keystrokes for more efficient navigation in the CKEditor 5 user interface:
Action | PC | Mac |
---|---|---|
Close contextual balloons and UI components like dropdowns | Esc | |
Move focus to the visible contextual balloon | Tab | |
Move focus between fields (inputs and buttons) in contextual balloons | Tab | |
Move focus to the toolbar | Alt + F10 | Alt + F10 (may require Fn) |
Navigate through the toolbar | ↑ / → / ↓ / ← | |
Move focus to the open dialog | Ctrl + F6 | Cmd + F6 (may require Fn) |
Execute the focused button | Enter / Space |
# Displaying keyboard shortcuts in the editor
CKEditor 5 offers a dedicated Accessibility help plugin that displays a list of all available keyboard shortcuts in a dialog. It can be opened by pressing Alt + 0 (on Windows) or Option + 0 (on macOS). Alternatively, you can use the toolbar button to open the dialog.
Press Alt+0 (⌥0 on Mac) while editing to display the list of available keyboard shortcuts.
The Accessibility help plugin is enabled by the Essentials
plugin from the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials
package (which also enables other fundamental editing features).
Learn how to add your own keyboard shortcuts to the Accessibility help dialog.
# Related productivity features
Besides using keyboard shortcuts, you may want to check the following productivity features:
- Autoformatting – Allows for using Markdown-like code to format text on the go.
- Automatic text transformation – Enables automatic turning snippets such as
(tm)
into™
and"foo"
into“foo”
. - Autolink – Turns the links and email addresses typed or pasted into the editor into active URLs.
- Mentions – Brings support for smart autocompletion.
Every day, we work hard to keep our documentation complete. Have you spotted outdated information? Is something missing? Please report it via our issue tracker.