Customizable shortcuts

How is this not a standard thing yet? As someone coming from Sketch I am thrilled to start exploring Figma. The first thing I do after getting to know the tool a bit is to change the shortcuts to how I am used to them, given they have the same functionality as in previous tools I’ve been using.

I am on Mac yet more than half of my shortcuts are not working. I don’t really understand how this is the case because Sketch uses the same system preferences dialogue to let you setup custom shortcuts but there it is working fine for almost all keys.

To add to this in a more appealing way to product designers:
Reasons to implement this feature:

• Your tool is used by professionals to make their job easier, having shortcuts makes one able to do their tasks at least twice as fast, therefore makes your tool twice as effective…
• People coming from competing products to your platform will feel more enticed to switch since the boundary for transitioning is a lot lower if there is less you have to learn. Being able to change the shortcuts to how you are used to is instrumental for this.

I haven’t been able to apply the Mac OS shortcuts to the Figma app, maybe I don’t know how to correctly define them, but even when naming it exactly as they appear, shortcuts won’t work.

Some really don’t make sense, design shortcuts IMO are made for your left hand, to never have to let got of your mouse or tablet, but things like moving between prototype and design are option+8 or 9 which forces you to use both hands, or the worst offender, select parent, which is shift+enter (for real?), even when you don’t use the standard esc, I guess for browsers it creates some issues.

Please give us a menu to customize our shortcuts, and like another user points out it makes transitioning much easier, I’d even go as far as having some shortcut presets from other apps so transitioning is as smooth as butter.

Agreed! With the new Quick Actions feature it would be so nice to remap it to something else. A lot of apps have started implementing this type of Quick Action feature, so I always try to map it to CMD+K if possible as I’ve gotten used to that shortcut for this type of feature from Slack.

Since the most recent update, this is becoming even more annoying. I used to be able to search for plugins with my keyboard. Now, this is not possible anymore cause the shortcut seems to have changed and is not accessible on a QWERTZ keyboard.

Windows users can use the new PowerToys as a workaround. Here is a sample customization where I’ve successfully mapped Layout Grids to Ctrl+’:

This approach is limited, however, and may be a bit overwhelming to some users. PowerToys is still in preview mode, you have to download it from Github, and didn’t have an installer last time I checked. As an application designed for professionals, Figma does need a complete implementation of customizable shortcuts.

I’m having a hard time switching from Sketch because of the lack of or strange double hand nature of the default keyboard shortcuts and it’s slowing me down tremendously.

I want to switch, but it’s very frustrating and feels like I’m ‘amputated’ not being able to access everything quickly using my keyboard. Making it difficult to justify the extra time spent using Figma.

If Figma would work natively with any customization in macOS System Preferences it would be solved.

Why are any keyboard shortcut customizations from System Preferences not effective in Figma?

I use a Portuguese keyboard and I’m unable to use the “Zoom to selection” shortcut. I miss it the most.

Figma shortcuts is the main reason why I don’t use Figma. By the way, I’m on mac with a French keyboard and for example I don’t know how to send a item back or move aan item forward. the shortcuts to manipulates items in z axis are already taken by macOS native shortcuts.

Yes. When migrating from Sketch to Figma, my speed was decreased and I had to re-learn all the shortcuts - some are just awkward where I have to let go of the mouse and use the right side of the keyboard. Ex. Remove fill, or Remove stroke. that uses “/” and “option+/”. I’m right-handed and using those shortcuts is awkward. I wish the keyboard shortcut was customizable!

I’d like to be able to use the function keys (F1 to F12) as custom shortcuts in Figma app for MacOS.

Figma does not allow function keys to be used for custom shortcuts. Typically this is possible in any app in Mac OS.

In screenshot below I’m able to define F1 to be used for ZOOM IN in Figma in the Mac OS Preferences Shortcuts options but nothing happens when the key is set to this value inside Figma app.