SilverBullet

Keyboard Shortcuts

Properties1
tagscustomization

3 min read

SilverBullet uses CodeMirror under the hood, which does the majority of the keyboard handling. In addition, it allows to for customization of (most) keys on a per-command basis. When you open the Command Palette, you will see the currently assigned keyboard shortcut(s).

It is by far the easiest to configure your keyboard shortcuts using the Configuration Manager.

Modifier keys

Your keyboard shortcut will typically consist of a combination of modifier keys as well as a letter or (special) character or number. The following modifier keys are supported:

  • Alt
  • Ctrl
  • Shift
  • Cmd: Command key (Mac only)
  • Meta: usually the “Windows” key
  • Mod: An alias for Ctrl on Linux and Windows, to Cmd on Mac

The keyboard shortcut is then combined to e.g. Mod-Alt-t.

Constraints

SilverBullet is constrained in what keyboard can be used in a few ways:

  • By the browser: you cannot (usually) override browser keyboard shortcuts, or at least shouldn’t (e.g. Cmd-t or Ctrl-t for opening a new tab)
  • By already used keyboard shortcuts, see Disabling keyboard shortcuts below to disable keyboard shortcuts for existing commands.
  • By CodeMirror’s restrictions. There a few, here are some we know about:
    • Alt-letter is not allowed (e.g. Alt-a), because it clashes with various (international) keyboards

Combos

Generally keyboard shortcuts are single stroke, however it possible to configure them as “combos” (multiple shortcuts entered in sequence). Out of the box, SilverBullet reserves two prefix keys for this “combo” use:

  • Mod-. (so “command dot” or Mac and “Ctrl dot” on Linux/Windows), used for various Outlines related commands
  • Ctrl-q used and reserved for Page Template use cases
  • Ctrl-g reserved for navigational commands:
    • Ctrl-g h navigates to the index (home) page

Assigning keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to Commands with key or mac. If only key is defined, this keyboard shortcut will be used for all operating systems, if mac is set, this keyboard will be used for macOS.

To (re)assign a keyboard shortcut for an existing command, you can use the ^Library/Std/APIs/Command > command.update(commandDef) API as follows:

command.update {
  name = "Task: Cycle State",
  key = "Ctrl-Shift-t",
}

When you define your own command, you can simply make them part of your command definition:

command.define {
  name = "My command",
  key = "Ctrl-Shift-t",
  run = function()
    editor.flashNotification "Hello world "
  end
}

You can also specify multiple keyboard shortcuts by passing in a table to either key or mac:

command.define {
  name = "My command",
  key = {"Ctrl-Shift-t", "Ctrl-Shift-o"},
  run = function()
    editor.flashNotification "Hello world "
  end
}

Disabling keyboard shortcuts

You can use the ^Library/Std/APIs/Command > command.update(commandDef) API to disable keyboard shortcuts of existing commands by setting them to an empty string, for example:

command.update {
  name = "Task: Cycle State",
  key = "",
  mac = ""
}

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