Customizing keyboard shortcuts

Available in version 3.4 or later.

You can add new keyboard shortcuts or re-assign existing shortcut to a different command.

To customize keyboard shortcuts:

• use Settings / Advanced Options... menu (or Ctrl + K Command Palette, type adv to narrow down and select Advanced Options... command)
• this opens a notepad with advanced settings file
• find Shortcuts array and add new shortcut definitions

An example of customization:

Shortcuts [
    [
        Cmd = CmdOpen
        Key = Alt + o
    ]
    [
        Cmd = CmdNone
        Key = q
    ]
    [
        Name = Create green highlight
        Cmd = CmdCreateAnnotHighlight #00ff00 openedit
        Key = a
    ]
    [
        Cmd = CmdNextTab
        ToolbarText = Next Tab
    ]
]

Explanation:

• by default SumatraPDF has Ctrl + O shortcut for CmdOpen (open a file) command. This changes the shortcut to Alt + o
• by default q closes the document. By binding it to CmdNone we can disable a built-in shortcut
• ver 3.6+: CmdCreateAnnotHighlight takes a color argument (#00ff00 is green) and boolean openedit argument. We re-assign a to create a highlight annotation with green color (different from default yellow) and to open annotations edit window (openedit boolean argument)
• ver 3.6+: Name is optional. If given, the command will show up in command palette (Ctrl + K)

Format of Key section:

• just a key (like a, Z, 5) i.e. letters a to z, A to Z, and numbers 0 to 9
• modifiers + key. Modifiers are: Shift, Alt, Ctrl e.g. Alt + F1, Ctrl + Shift + Y
• there are some special keys (e.g. Alt + F3)
  • F1 - F24
  • numpad0 - numpad9 : 0 to 9 but on a numerical keyboard
  • Delete, Backspace, Insert, Home, End, Escape
  • Left, Right, Up, Down for arrow keys
  • full list of special keys
• without modifiers, case does matter i.e. a and A are different
• with modifiers, use Shift to select upper-case i.e. Alt + a is the same as Alt + A , use Alt + Shift + A to select the upper-case A

Commands

You can see a full list of commands (or in the source code)

Notes

The changes are applied right after you save settings file so that you can test changes without restarting SumatraPDF.

If a custom Shortcut doesn't work it could be caused by invalid command name or invalid command arguments.

We log information about unsuccessful parsing of a shortcut so check the logs if things don't work as expected.