Appendix C — Keyboard Shortcuts

Introduction

Using keyboard shortcuts for document editing—rather than reaching for your mouse—can boost productivity. ¹ ^, ²

Navigating Cursor

Instead of pointing and clicking where you want your mouse to go, you can use keyboard shortcuts.

Words & Letters

“Words” refer to a string of characters buffered before and after by a space and sometimes other separating characters like a dash.

Action	Windows	Mac
Move cursor to the beginning/end of a word	Ctrl Left/Right	Option Left/Right
Delete previous word	Ctrl Backspace	Option Delete
Delete next word	Ctrl Delete	Option Fn Delete
Highlight previous/next word	Ctrl Shift Left/Right	Option Shift Left/Right
Highlight previous/next letter	Shift Left/Right	Shift Left/Right

Sometimes it is actually faster to use your mouse, eg, if you want to move your cursor to the middle of a line with many words, using a keyboard shortcut would require holding or for a few seconds, which is probably slower than using your mouse.

Lines

Action	Windows	Mac
Move cursor to the beginning/end of a line	Alt Left/Right	Command Left/Right
Delete from cursor to beginning of line	Alt Backspace	Command Delete
Delete from cursor to end of line	Alt Delete	Command Fn Delete
Select from cursor to beginning/end of line	Alt Shift Left/Right	Command Shift Left/Right
Select from cursor to same position on previous/next line	Shift Up/Down	Shift Up/Down

General Themes

• Ctrl (Windows) and Option (Mac) allow word navigation

• Alt (Windows) and Command (Mac) allow line navigation

• Shift: to highlight words (useful for copying and pasting)

• Backspace and Delete: to delete

RStudio

Below are the most useful RStudio keyboard shortcuts.

TipRStudio Keyboard Shortcuts

• To view all of RStudio’s keyboard shortcuts, click Tools –> Keyboard Shortcuts Help or use the keyboard shortcut

• To customize these shortcuts, click Tools –> Modify Keyboard Shortcuts…

Tab Completion

After typing the second letter of a function or object name (in the Editor or Console), the autocomplete menu pops up. Use the arrow keys to select from the menu then hit TabTab or EnterEnter to be typed automatically. Tab completion also works for function arguments.

Working in Source Files

Below are some useful keyboard shortcuts when working in source files, eg, Quarto files.

Action	Windows	Mac
Insert code chunk	Ctrl Alt I	Option Command I
Insert pipe operator (|>)	Ctrl Shift M	Command Shift M
Insert assignment operator (<-)	Alt -	Option -
Run current code chunk	Ctrl Shift Enter	Command Shift Return
Run current line/currently selected lines	Ctrl Enter	Command Return
(Un)comment current line/currently selected lines	Ctrl Shift C	Command Shift C
Reformat select part of code	Ctrl Shift A	Command Shift A

TipWorking in Source Files

• When running a single line of code, your cursor can be anywhere on the line–it doesn’t need to be all the way at the beginning or end.
• When running code that is selected across multiple lines, exactly what is selected is run.
• If you want to run part of a line, select just that part.
• If you want to run multiple whole lines, select all those lines in their entirety.
• When commenting/uncommenting lines, you don’t need to have the whole line fully selected. Having just part of a line selected suffices.

Working in Console

While you may be used to writing all of your code in code chunks within a document, it is often useful to run code interactively in the Console as “scratch work.” You’ll often find that when testing out code, trying it out in the Console keeps your code document clean.

Action	Windows	Mac
Move cursor to the Console	Ctrl 2	Ctrl 2
Cycle through previous commands	Up/Down	Up/Down
Show pop up of command history	Ctrl Up	Command Up
Interrupt currently executing command	Esc	Esc

You can pull up the documentation (help page) for a function by entering ?function_name in the Console.

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1. Andrew Cohen, Founder and CEO of Brainscape, estimated that one can save 8 days per year when using keyboard shortcuts effectively (Brainscape.com).

2. There are many online tutorials for RStudio keyboard shortcuts with different levels of quality and details, eg, Appsilon has GIF illustrations and advanced shortcuts.