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 |
| Link | Ctrl + K | Cmd + K |
| Insert a hard break (e.g. a new paragraph) | Enter | |
Insert a soft break (i.e. a <br>) |
Shift + Enter | |
| Nest the current list item (when in a list) | Tab | |
| Move out of link or inline code style | ← ← / → → | |
| Revert autoformatting action | Backspace | |
| When a widget is selected (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 | ↓ / → | |
| 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 | ↑ / → / ↓ / ← | |
| Execute the currently focused button | Enter / Space | |
# Related productivity features
In addition to 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.