Screenplay shortcut cheat sheet (and the slash palette)

In one line: every key that actually works in the screenplay editor, what / on an empty line gives you, and where the old Script Studio shortcuts went.

The copy on your screen comes first

The ? button on the toolbar opens the shortcut guide. It draws the flow diagram for whichever format this file is in and puts a badge on it saying which one, and it reads its keys out of the code, so it is always newer than any document. This page is the one you print and stick beside the desk.

Below, Mod means ⌘ on a Mac and Ctrl everywhere else.

Element flow: Tab and Enter

Where Tab takes you depends on the element you are standing on, and the two formats differ.

Taiwan Element Flow

Action Tab Character Enter Dialogue Enter Character

Each box is the key you press and the element you land on. Tab toggles Action and Character; Enter loops Character and Dialogue for as long as you keep going. Parenthetical is off this road — Mod+4 or the slash palette — and Tab on a dialogue line does nothing in this format.

Hollywood Element Flow

Action Tab Character Enter Dialogue Tab Parenthetical Enter Dialogue

Tab from either a character or a dialogue line goes to a parenthetical, the way Final Draft and Arc Studio do it. Shift+Tab walks back: Character to Action, Dialogue and Parenthetical to Character.

One thing holds in both formats: Enter on a Transition starts a new scene. Enter on an empty line usually drops you back to Action, but not always — an empty Parenthetical goes to Dialogue in both formats, an empty Action goes to Character in Hollywood, and an empty Dialogue goes to Character in Taiwan format. Character names autocomplete from your recent dialogue.

Number keys change the element outright

Key	Becomes
Ctrl+1	Action
Ctrl+2	Character
Ctrl+3	Dialogue
Ctrl+4	Parenthetical
Ctrl+5	Shot

Transitions have no number key. They sit at the bottom of each scene and get inserted from that slot.

Editing

Key	Does
Mod+Z	Undo
Mod+Shift+Z or Mod+Y	Redo
Mod+C	Copy — the whole line when nothing is selected
Mod+V	Paste

Undo means undo. Splitting, merging and deleting scenes, retyping an element, dragging cards around the board — all of it goes into Mod+Z. The stack is fifty deep, and consecutive typing on the same line within about a second and a bit collapses into one step, so ten characters is one undo rather than ten.

Navigation and focus

Key	Does
Mod+Shift+↑	Previous scene
Mod+Shift+↓	Next scene
Mod+Shift+[	Collapse or expand the current scene
Mod+Shift+1	Line focus (press again to turn off)
Mod+Shift+2	Scene focus (press again to turn off)

Collapse-all has no key. That is the button at the bottom right of the page.

The slash command palette

Type / at the start of an empty line and the palette opens. There is a filter box at the top: type to fuzzy-match, ↑ ↓ to move, Enter to run, Esc to close.

Three groups.

Elements

Action Ctrl+1, Character Ctrl+2, Dialogue Ctrl+3, Parenthetical Ctrl+4, Shot Ctrl+5. Pick one and the line you are on becomes that element.

In Taiwanese format the parenthetical row is hidden from the palette — it is not part of the Taiwanese Tab flow, so it does not get advertised in the menu. Ctrl+4 still inserts one.

Quick Insert

Where this group gets its data changed in 4.0, and it is worth being precise. There is no character bible and no location list any more. What the palette shows instead:

• Up to five characters, taken from the cast Slima derives from every .script file in this book, ordered by number of dialogue lines, with that line count on the right. A character is in the cast for one reason only: somebody typed that name on a character cue.
• Up to five locations, the book's most-used scene-heading locations, each labelled INT or EXT.

Both lists are book-wide, not file-wide. So when you open the first scene of episode two, the locations from episode one are already sitting there.

Choosing a character does three things: retypes the current line as a character cue, fills the name in, and presses Enter for you, leaving the cursor on the dialogue line.

Scene

• New Scene — appends one at the end
• Note — pins a note to the line you were on, labelled "Author's note (not exported)"

Book-wide keys that work here too

Key	Does
Mod+P	Quick open — the fastest way to jump between episodes
Mod+Shift+E	Explorer
Mod+Shift+A	AI Chat
Mod+Shift+O	Outline
Mod+Shift+C	Comments
Mod+Shift+N	Notes
Mod+Shift+B	Beta Reader
Mod+D	Zen Mode
Mod+Shift+D	Dark mode
Mod+/	Help
Alt+N	New file
Mod+,	Settings
Mod+S	Save — it saves itself anyway, this is the reflex key

There is no Mod+F. Nothing searches inside the file; full-text search is the Search panel in the activity bar. See find and replace.

Old Script Studio keys, and what they do now

Anyone arriving from the old studio will try these, so here they are:

Old key	Now
Ctrl+Shift+N new scene	Gone. Mod+Shift+N opens the Notes panel across the whole Writing Studio
Ctrl+\ / Ctrl+Shift+\ collapse	Moved to Mod+Shift+[, because Mod+\ is Split Editor
Ctrl+Shift+F switch format	Removed on purpose. One keystroke reformatting an entire screenplay was too easy to hit by accident; use the toolbar
F11 Zen	The site-wide focus shortcut is Mod+D
Cmd/Ctrl+Opt+←/→ previous/next episode	Gone with the season hierarchy. One episode is one file, so Mod+P is how you jump
Cmd 1–Cmd 4 page switcher	Gone with the Script Studio shell

Related

• Docs: Opening a screenplay file
• Docs: Smart Enter and the Tab element flow
• Docs: Splitting, merging, inserting and reordering scenes
• Docs: Taiwanese and Hollywood
• Docs: Full keyboard shortcuts list