simpler iOS hardware keyboard shortcuts

Scrivener Wish List
1

TL;DR: The hardware keyboard shortcuts feel inconsistent with one another and difficult to learn.

(If you have no plans to modify the shortcuts, stop now… otherwise, read on!)

Details:

The hardware keyboard shortcuts for iOS (visible by holding the command key) nearly all make use of a modifier key like Shift, Control, or Option. Sometimes that makes sense – Command-S for save, Command-shift-S for sync, because that’s sort of like a super-save. But in general, it would be easier to remember and use shortcuts if they didn’t have the modifier – like why not just Command-R for hiding the keyboard row?

Other shortcuts are counter-intuitive (to me, at least): Command-Shift-A for annotation, but Control-Shift-F for footnote.

On still others, I think the modifier is unnecessary – Command-Shift-] for align right (why not just Command-]?) The font-bigger and -smaller shortcuts are also a little odd – Command-Option-= makes the font bigger, but there’s a Command-+ that makes it just a little bigger (no help that the plus sign is over the equality sign on U.S. keyboards, so it comes out as Command-Option-Shift-=.) And that means Command-minus is smaller, Command-Option-minus is “a little” smaller – there’s an asymmetry to that setup.

Anywho, I think there could be some simplification of the hardware keyboard shortcuts, and it would be a great help to those who like to use them!

Many thanks for a great product,

g.

2

There are certainly some things that may feel idiosyncratic coming from Windows, things that are designed to match, or at least avoid conflicting with, the Mac version or standards.

For example, Command-R hides and shows the tab & indent ruler in the Mac version of Scrivener—a thing that unfortunately does not exist in the iOS editor. Perhaps some day it will though, we hope Apple adds that—and if so it would be nice to use the same shortcut.

Meanwhile Shift-Command-R is used on the Mac to toggle the Format Bar—which isn’t all that different in function from the extended keyboard row.

Alignment, again those are just old familiar shortcuts for Mac users. Cmd-] all by itself is very commonly a history navigation shortcut, like Alt-RightArrow on Windows.

Yeah, I’d agree with you on that one; I can’t really explain why that is the way it is.

Well, the good news is that if you ever get a Mac and use Scrivener on it, you’ll already know some of the shortcuts. :laughing: Otherwise though, we had to choose one platform or the other, and for iOS it made much more sense to adopt Mac-friendly shortcuts. It’s quite likely a ’Droid version of Scrivener would use Windows shortcuts as a basis, but we’ll cross that bridge once there is a bridge to cross.

3

Indeed, keyboard shortcuts are designed to be consistent with the macOS version, so that anyone moving between platforms doesn’t have to remember that the same keyboard shortcut does different things on different platforms.

Yeah, I’d agree with you on that one; I can’t really explain why that is the way it is.
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That’s weird that you can’t explain why that one is, since we’ve discussed it in the past and I’ve explained it to you. :slight_smile: It’s that way because in the next major update of Scrivener, Shift-Cmd-F is used to invoke project search, so is not available for footnotes.