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guideKeyboard 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.

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.