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Edit or Create
Keyboard Shortcuts

Where ?

In the preferences dialog, go to the keyboard section or edit the keyboard configuration file directly with a text editor. You will find this file in the directory where you installed Audacity. Its filename is Audacity-keys.xml .

Audacity will NOT load this keymap upon startup, but save them in the registry(Windows). Should you make changes to the Audacity.xml file with a text editor, you'll need to load that shortcut file with the "Load" button to make Audacity use them. Thus you can save your keymaps under any filename with an XML extension and keep different keymaps around for different purposes.

Audacity will NOT store the current keymap in the file Audacity.xml. Should you want to make changes to the current keymap with a text editor, you'll have to use the "Save" button to save that keymap to an XML file first. After editing it you'll have to "Load" it again.

Editing and Creating Shortcuts with the Preferences Dialog

Keyboard Preferences

Changing a shortcut:

  1. Click on the command in the list. The command to be changed is now highlighted.
  2. Click in to the box to left of the Set button. If a shortcut was assigned to the command previously, it will be displayed in this box.
  3. Hit the key or key combination you wish to assign to this command. Then processed to the next step.
  4. Click on the Set button to assign the chosen key or key combination to the chosen command.

Clearing a shortcut:

  1. Click on the command in the list. The command to be cleared is now highlighted.
  2. Click on the clear button to clear the command.

Editing and Creating Shortcuts with a text editor

The keyboard shortcuts you were editing with the dialog are stored in a simple XML file. Thus, you can edit it with any text editor.

Each keyboard map starts with

<audacitykeyboard audacityversion="1.2">

and ends with

</audacitykeyboard>

Each command is defined with the command tag. An example :

   <command name="Undo" label="Undo" key="Ctrl+Z" />.

name

The actual command as Audacity understands it.

label

Command description as seen in the Preferences keyboard map editor.

key

This is the actual shortcut. Check out what the format is in the Preferences dialog.


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