Shortcuts

Penpot provides shortcuts that help to speed your workflow. Many keyboard shortcuts appear next to the command names in menus.

Here you can find a list of all keyboard shortcuts that you can use in Penpot. Bear in mind that most of them are at the workspace, where they are more needed.

The tables below list the default shortcuts. You can change most of them to fit your keyboard layout or your habits. See Customize shortcuts.

Customize shortcuts

Go to Your account → Shortcuts to see every shortcut and change the ones you want. From the workspace, open the shortcuts panel (Help & info → Shortcuts in the main menu, or ?) and click Customize in Settings.

Your shortcuts are saved in your account, so they follow you to any computer and browser. After a change, reload any other open Penpot tabs to apply it.

Find a shortcut

Shortcuts are grouped into Workspace, Dashboard and Viewer. Use the tabs to see All of them, only your Custom ones, or the ones you Disabled.

The search field matches both the action name and the keys. Type "group" to find the grouping actions, or "shift" to see every shortcut that uses Shift.

Change a shortcut

1. Click the shortcut you want to change.
2. Press the new keys. The last combination you press is the one recorded.
3. Click the check mark to save, or the cross to cancel. Clicking outside the editor also cancels. Esc does not cancel: it is recorded as a key.

If the keys are already used by another action in the same group, Penpot shows which one. When you save, the shortcut moves to the action you are editing, and the other action appears under Disabled.

Each action takes one combination. If an action had two defaults (for example, two ways to redo), saving a custom one replaces both.

From the same editor you can also disable a shortcut so that no keys trigger it, or reset it to its default value. Custom shortcuts are marked with a dot, and the main menu highlights the custom keys.

Paste cannot be customized.

Keyboard layouts

Letters are recorded by the character they type, so they follow your layout (on AZERTY, the A key records a). With Shift, Alt or another modifier, letter and digit keys record the key itself, not the character the modifier makes (Shift0, not Shift); OptionM on macOS, not µ).

Punctuation keys (such as -, [, / or ') are recorded by their physical position on the keyboard, so Shift with the + key records Shift+ on a Spanish layout. In browsers that do not expose the keyboard layout, such as Firefox or Safari, Penpot records the character you type instead; the shortcut still works there. Keys typed with AltGr record the character they type (\ on a Spanish layout).

One known limitation: number keys set opacity (0–9) only where digits are typed without Shift, so AZERTY layouts need the numeric keypad for them.

Reset to default

When you have custom shortcuts, a Reset all button appears next to the search field. It lists every shortcut that will go back to its default before you confirm.

Export and import your shortcuts

Use the Import/Export button at the bottom of the page to move your setup to another account or share it with your team.

• Export downloads a JSON file with your custom and disabled shortcuts. It is available once you have changed at least one shortcut.
• Import reads a JSON file exported from Penpot and shows the shortcuts it will change. Click Import to confirm.

Importing replaces your custom shortcuts in each group included in the file (Workspace, Dashboard or Viewer). Custom shortcuts in those groups that are not in the file go back to their defaults. If an imported shortcut uses keys taken by a default one, the default one is disabled.

Workspace

The Workspace is where the designs are actually created. More about the Workspace.

Item Alignment

Edit

Main menu

Modify layers

Navigation

Layers panel

Keyboard shortcuts and mouse actions for the Layers sidebar. Layer order in the panel is bottom-to-top; Tab and Shift + Tab move between siblings of the current selection (wrapping at the ends). Use Ctrl + ↑ / ↓ to change stacking order in the list (see Modify layers).

Panels

Path editor

Copy, cut, paste, duplicate and select all also work on nodes while you edit a path. For mouse gestures, see Reshape with the mouse.

Shapes

Tools

Zoom

Text edition

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the place where you will be able to organize your files, libraries, projects and teams. More about the Dashboard.

Generic

Navigation

View mode

The View mode is the area to present and share designs and play the prototype interactions. More about the View mode.

Generic

Navigation

Zoom