Keyboard shortcuts

These are Terra's default shortcuts. To see them in the app, and to change them, open Settings › Hotkeys: press ⌘, and click Hotkeys, or choose Help › Keyboard Shortcuts. The groups below follow the same order.

Keys are shown in the order macOS uses: ⌃ Control, ⌥ Option, ⇧ Shift, ⌘ Command. Where a command has more than one shortcut, any of them works.

Global

No keys by default: Quick capture and New…. Separately, ⌃⌥⌘N opens quick capture from any app, even when Terra is in the background. That one isn't listed in Settings › Hotkeys.

Navigation

No keys by default: Database drawer, Comments, Versions, AI conversations, Source mode and Reader mode.

With text selected in a note, ⌘B makes it bold instead of hiding the sidebar.

Panes and tabs

• ⌘W closes the tab you're in, and a pane closes with its last tab. With only one tab left in the window, it closes the window.
• A window holds up to four panes, so only ⌘1 to ⌘4 ever have a pane to go to. Previous pane and Next pane stop at the first and last pane rather than wrapping around.
• ⇧⌘T remembers the last 20 tabs you closed, until you quit.

Editor

No keys by default: Slash commands and Reload theme.

Other

A layout rearranges the panes you already have, so each one works only with that many panes open. No keys by default: Tag manager, Property manager and Help.

Reader

These work while a book is open in the e-reader and the page has focus. Click the page first.

Zoom in, Zoom out and Fit page apply to fixed-layout books, whose pages are laid out like a PDF. Go to page needs a book that lists its print pages.

Keys in notes, code, sheets and the sidebar

Settings › Hotkeys lists these too, as a reference. They belong to the part of the window you're working in, so you can't change them.

Undo

Outside a text field, ⌘Z also brings back the last note you moved to the Trash.

Text

While you're writing in a note:

Code

With the cursor in a code block:

Sheets and databases

In a sheet, with several cells selected:

Peek

While a note is open in a peek:

Sidebar

With a folder selected in the sidebar:

More keys

A few keys aren't in Settings at all:

Markdown as you type

In a note, typing Markdown marks formats the text straight away. A few of the most used:

Basic formatting syntax shows each one with what it saves in the file, and Advanced formatting covers tables, math and the rest.

Change a shortcut

You can give any command in the Global, Navigation, Panes and tabs, Editor, Other and Reader groups new keys, including commands that have none.

1. Press ⌘, to open Settings, then click Hotkeys. (Help › Keyboard Shortcuts goes straight there.)

2. Click the keys beside a command. They change to Press keys….

3. Press the new keys. To back out, press Esc.

   

To undo a change, hover over the command and click Reset to default (the curved arrow). To remove a shortcut without replacing it, hover and click Unbind (×).

Good to know:

• New keys replace all of a command's shortcuts. Command palette has two by default, ⌘K and ⇧⌘P; after a change it has only the one you pressed. Reset to default brings both back.
• Terra doesn't warn you when two commands share the same keys, and only one of them will run. Check the list for the keys before you use them.
• Shortcuts belong to the Library that's open, so each Library can have its own.
• The menu bar keeps showing the default keys, and its items still respond to them.
• A shortcut without ⌘or⌃ doesn't fire while you're typing in a note or a text field.

Related

• Make Terra yours: the toolbar, themes and the rest of Settings.
• Find your way around: what each pane, panel and drawer is.
• Basic formatting syntax: what to type for each kind of formatting.
• Search syntax: what you can type in the search window.