Keyboard Shortcuts
Every key and gesture the studio listens for, and how to bring the list up inside the editor.
If you have built anything in another design tool, you already know most of these. The studio answers the usual chords — duplicate, select all, undo, nudge — so your hands can keep doing what they already do.
Bring the list up while you work
You never have to leave the editor to look one up:
- Press ? anywhere on the canvas, or
- Open the ⋯ menu at the top right of the studio and choose Keyboard shortcuts
The same list opens either way. It prints ⌘ and ⌥ if you are on a Mac and Ctrl and Alt if you are on Windows or a Chromebook, so what you read is what your own keyboard says. Press Esc, or Close, when you are done.
Below, ⌘ means Ctrl on Windows and Chromebooks.
Editing
- ⌘ Z — undo
- ⌘ Shift Z, or ⌘ Y — redo
- ⌘ C — copy
- ⌘ V — paste
- ⌘ D — duplicate the selection
- Alt (Option on a Mac) + drag — drag off a copy
- Delete or Backspace — delete the selection
- ⌘ S — save now
⌘ D duplicates whatever is selected — one widget or a whole selection — in a single step, so one press is one undo. Alt-drag is the same idea with your mouse: hold Alt, drag a widget, and the original stays put while the copy comes with you. It is the fastest way to build a row of answer cards.
⌘ V is smart about what is on your clipboard. Copy a widget in Berdee and paste, and you get that widget back. Copy a sentence from a document or a web page and paste, and you get a new text widget holding it. Copy a picture and paste, and you get an image widget — see Add an image by dropping or pasting it.
⌘ S is the one shortcut that works everywhere — mid-sentence in a text box, inside the Lesson graph, inside History. Berdee saves on its own anyway; ⌘ S is for when you want to be sure before you close the laptop. With a settings or Configure dialog open it saves _that dialog_, the same as clicking its Save button.
Selection
- ⌘ A — select everything on this scene
- Shift + click — add one more to the selection
- Drag on empty canvas — draw a box around several
- Esc — let go of the selection
⌘ A picks up every widget on the scene you are looking at — not the whole lesson, and not the widgets a layout puts behind the scene, which are edited on the layout itself. Widgets tucked inside a container come along with their container rather than on their own, which is the same rule the drag-a-box gesture follows.
Once several widgets are selected you can move, align, style, or delete them together — see Editing Several Widgets at Once.
View
- ⌘ + — zoom in
- ⌘ − — zoom out
- ⌘ 0 — fit the scene on screen
- Ctrl + scroll, or pinch on a trackpad — zoom where the pointer is
- Space + drag — move around the canvas
- Scroll — up and down
- Shift + scroll — side to side
- ⌘ \\ — show or hide the left panel (Scenes, Layouts, Widgets)
- ⌘ ⌥ \\ — show or hide the properties panel
Full guide: Moving Around the Canvas. The two panel chords work even while you are typing in a panel's search box, and hovering either panel's collapse or expand button shows its chord. More on the panels: Studio overview.
Arranging
- Arrow keys — nudge by 1 pixel
- Shift + arrow keys — nudge by 10 pixels
Arrow keys move whatever is selected, including a multi-widget selection. Use single nudges for the last pixel of alignment and Shift-nudges to shift a block of content without picking up the mouse.
When shortcuts pause
Shortcuts step aside when something else has a better claim on the key:
- While you are typing. Backspace deletes a letter, not your widget, and ⌘ A selects the text in the field you are in. (The panel chords, ⌘ \\ and ⌘ ⌥ \\, still work: they type nothing.)
- While a dialog is open. Settings, Variables, a widget's ⚙ Configure panel, the publish confirmation — Esc closes the dialog rather than clearing your selection.
- **In History.** You are reading a past version, not editing, so nothing — including undo — reaches the lesson until you restore.
- **In the Lesson graph, the canvas shortcuts stand down because the canvas is not what you are looking at. Undo, redo, ? and ⌘ S** still work.