WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows & Mac

If you use a computer a lot, you must know the value of WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts. They are great time savers, and they help boost your productivity.

Imagine you were working on, say, a blog post, and wanted to select all the text you typed. If you choose to use your mouse, you’d have to drag your cursor from top to bottom. This can be time-consuming. However, by holding down Ctrl + A (on the PC), you would accomplish the same task, but in a second.

This goes to prove how time-saving keyboard shortcuts can be. Thankfully, there are lots of keyboard shortcuts in WordPress that you can exploit to stay productive. You can use these keyboard shortcuts to perform lots of actions in WordPress.

In this post, we will be exploring some of the common WordPress shortcuts. The thing is, if you are familiar with Microsoft office shortcuts, you already have one foot in the door.

Now, beyond the basic shortcuts, you might already be familiar with, we will be digging deep a little further. We will be looking at WordPress shortcuts for comment moderation, Gutenberg editor, and for text formatting.

Content

For Windows users
For Mac users
WordPress formatting shortcuts
WordPress shortcuts for comment moderation
Gutenberg keyboard shortcuts
Conclusion

WordPress Keyboard Shortcut for Windows Users

So, we will be starting off with the common shortcuts you can use to format texts in WordPress’s visual editor. These are shortcuts you are probably already familiar with. If you’re ready let’s get started.

To make it easy for you to follow through, we have broken shortcuts into sub-sections: text selection shortcuts, text manipulation, and formatting shortcuts.

Text Selection Shortcuts

There are a couple of ways you can select text on a WordPress website. Here are some of the keyboard shortcuts that let you do just that.

Ctrl + A – Select all text.
Shift + Right Key – Select one character at a time to the right
Shift + Left Key – Select one character at a time to the left
Shift + Up Key – Select lines of text, one at a time moving up
Shift + Down Key – Select lines of text moving down
Shift + Home – Select a line of text from the beginning to the current position of the cursor
Shift + End – Select a line from the text from the current position of the cursor to the last letter.
Esc key – Undo selection

Text Manipulation Keyboard Shortcuts in WordPress

We just showed you how to select chunks of text with shortcuts. So, how do you manipulate the selected texts without having to move your mouse? Let’s show you.

Ctrl + B – Bold text
Ctrl + C – Copy selected text
Ctrl + X – Cut selected text
Ctrl + I – Apply Italics
Ctrl + U – Underline selected text
Ctrl + K – Insert or edit link
Ctrl + Z – Undo recent changes
Ctrl + Y – Redo changes
Alt + Shift + S – Remove link
Alt + Shift + R – Align text right
Alt + Shift + L – Align text left
Alt + Shift + C – Center-align text
Alt + Shift + D – Strikethrough selected text
Alt + Shift + J – Justify text
Alt + Shift + M – Insert image
Alt + Shift + Q – Insert Quote
Alt + Shift + O – Start an ordered list
Alt + Shift + T – Insert more tag
Alt + Shift + P – Insert page break
Alt + Shift + W – Distraction-free writing mode. That is, everything except the text editor gets hidden.
Alt + Shift + H – Fire up the help menu
Alt + Shift + X – Add/remove code tag
Alt + Shift + 1/2/3/4/5/6 – Change text to heading 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6

WordPress Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts we’ve looked at so far are for Windows users. They are pretty much similar to Mac keys, only with slight changes. Here is a list of them:

Cmd + B – Bolden text
Cmd + C – Copy text
Cmd + X – Cut text
Cmd + A – Select all text
Cmd + V – Paste the selected text
Cmd + I – Make selected text italics
Cmd + U – Underline selected text
Cmd + K – Insert link
Option + Ctrl + S – Remove link
Option + Ctrl + J – Justify text
Option + Ctrl + R – Align right
Option + Ctrl + L – Align left
Option + Ctrl + C – Align Center
Option + Ctrl + D – Strikethrough
Option + Ctrl + U – Create an unordered list
Option + Ctrl + Q – Create a quote
Option + Ctrl + 1/2/3/4/5/6 – Change text to heading 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6

WordPress Formatting Shortcuts

WordPress has some really handy formatting shortcuts. To use them, all you have to do is press certain key characters once or more. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Note: For these shortcuts to work, you need to hit the Space button after typing them. If nothing happens, try the Enter button.

* – Starts an unordered list
1.- Create an ordered list
1) – Same as above
## – Heading 2
### -Heading 3
#### – Heading 4
##### – Heading 5
###### – Heading 6

Keyboard Shortcuts for Comment Moderation

So far, we’ve shown you keyboard shortcuts for editing and formatting content in WordPress. But did you know that there are shortcuts you can leverage to moderate comments in your WordPress site?

These shortcuts will be particularly useful if you run a WordPress blog and receive lots of comments.

Comment shortcuts, by default, are disabled. As such, you’d have to enable them. To do so, head over to your dashboard, and then navigate to Users >> Your Profile. After that, check the Keyboard Shortcuts box.

Next, scroll down the page and hit the Update Profile button.

With the shortcuts enabled, you are all set to use them. Of course, for these shortcuts to work you would first have to open the Comments section.

First, here are the WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts for selecting comments

J – Select the next comment below
K – Select the comment above the current selection
X – To select multiple comments
Shift + X – Multiple de-selection

After selecting the comments, you would want to moderate them. You can do so by either applying bulk actions, or moderating them one at a time.

Here are shortcuts that let you do just that:

R – Reply to a comment
A – Approve current comment
D – Delete a comment
U – Unapprove a comment
Q – Quick reply to a comment
S – Mark comment as spam
Shift + S – Mark all selected comments as spam
E – Switch to full-screen edit mode
Shift + A – Approve all checked comments
Shift + Z – Restore deleted comment from the trash

WordPress Gutenberg Keyboard Shortcuts

If your WordPress website uses Gutenberg block editor, there are a couple of keyboard shortcuts you can take advantage of to make your life easy. Here they are:

Enter – Creates a new block
/ – Inserts a new elements into a new block
Ctrl + Shift + D – Duplicates currently selected block
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + M (on the PC) – Switch between code editor and visual editor
Cmd + Shift + Option + M (on the Mac) – Same as above
Ctrl + Alt + T – Insert a new block just above the currently selected block
Ctrl + Alt + Y – Insert a new block below the selected block
Esc – Clear all selection

Conclusion

So there you have them; WordPress shortcuts you can take advantage of to stay productive while running your website.

You may not master all of them right off the bat – that’s okay. But with consistent practice, you can get used to them in no time.

To make things easy, you can also print out those you will use often and keep that close as reference. In no time, you should master them and no longer need the printed copy.

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