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Search Keyboard Shortcuts

  • April 3, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 1873 views
Buck

“I increase font weight all the time. I wonder if there’s a keyboard shortcut for it.”

  1. CMD + / (quick-search appears)

  2. Type “Keyboard Shorcuts”, and press enter. (Shortcuts panel appears.)

  3. Type “font weight”. (Shortcuts > Text tab gets selected. “Font weight” is highlighted.)

  4. Memorize the shortcut.

  5. Click your text and use the shortcut (Shortcuts panel’s still open to help you remember.)

The Problem: You have no idea whether a keyboard shortcut exists. You might not know the right terminology (“font boldness”). You have no clue which tab it might fall under.

Solution: Search gets you there so much quicker, then back into your work.

2 replies

Graham_Paterson

Not sure if this helps, but if you type the shortcut you’re looking for directly into the quick actions bar it will show you the shortcuts for that action which is an easier way to find shortcuts than looking through the keyboard-shortcuts menu imo.

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Buck
  • Buck
  • Author
  • April 3, 2024

This does help, thank you! The possible use cases are varied but I think the built-in functionality you suggest covers a lot of them. I didn’t realize you could go about it that way since it’s subtle (but cool, now that I know to try it). Additional thoughts:

  1. Some shortcuts are missing from quick search but are very common (e.g. Copy, Cut, Paste, Edit selected image [Enter] ). Current functionality is probably OK for 90% of cases.

  2. Keyboard + Mouse shortcuts are missing from quick search, e.g. "while resizing, hold ‘OPTION’ to resize from the center. Having context helps to understand these, and it’s an action you can’t just press Enter to execute from the quick search. It may make sense to be able to search for it while on the keyboard shortcuts panel.

  3. If I want to cycle-through keyboard shortcuts to see what exists that contains a keyword, I suppose I can do that in the quick search functionality. Probably OK as is.

  4. If I want to see adjacent or related shortcuts (“Tidy Up” when searching for Align Left, Center, Right, etc…), seeing them in context of each other can help discovery and memorization. In this case, a. you know you’re only thinking about keyboard shortcuts and not all possible functions, b. it’s a quick jump to the shortcut you want to see in context of other shortcuts, and c. wordings like “Tidy Up” are colloquialisms and I personally would never think to ask for this feature by that name. 😆 Search + pinpointing in context with other shortcuts could be useful for these kinds of cases. A search bar is ephemeral; a panel/page layout is more enduring and easier to picture in one’s head when trying to recall.

  5. With current functionality, it’s probably just a user training issue. When I think, “I wonder if there’s a keyboard shortcut for this”, my expected path was, “Go to where the keyboard shortcuts are, then find out if there is one for this function”. It’s technically more accessible, and faster, to use the quick search, if you know that you can find it that way.

Your reply helps! Thank you! Considering this, I doubt Figma would pick up this feature suggestion unless they have all the extra time in the world and are bored out of their minds. 😆

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