Keyboard, accessibility and touch

Everything in pxstud.io can be done from the keyboard: every command is in the command palette, every shortcut can be changed, and the canvas itself can be drawn on with the arrow keys. On a touch screen, one finger draws, two fingers zoom and pan, and a two-finger tap undoes.

Finding and running any command

Press Ctrl+K (or choose Edit > Command Palette...) and type part of a command's name. The list shows each command's menu path and shortcut, and dims the ones that can't run right now. Use the arrow keys to pick one and Enter to run it. With nothing typed, the commands you ran most recently come first.

Changing shortcuts

Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts... lists every command with its shortcuts. Search by command, menu or key, then:

• click Add (or an existing shortcut) and press the new key combination; Esc cancels;
• if the combination already belongs to another command, choose Reassign to move it, or Cancel;
• Reset puts one command back to its default, and Reset all puts back every one;
• Export... saves your set as a JSON file, and Import... loads one, for example in another browser.

Tick Disable single-key shortcuts to switch off every shortcut that is a single letter, digit or punctuation key (with or without Shift), so a stray key press never changes tool. The full list of defaults is in Keyboard shortcuts.

Tab is never a shortcut and can't be assigned to one: it always moves to the next control, so you can never get stuck in a panel or on the canvas. (That's why switching a tilemap layer between Tiles and Pixels is Alt+T rather than Aseprite's Tab; see Tilemaps.)

Moving around the editor

• Skip to canvas. The first thing Tab reaches on the page is a Skip to canvas link. Press Enter on it to put the keyboard focus straight on the canvas.
• Landmarks. The menu bar is the page's header, and every panel is a labelled region (Tools, Tool options, Timeline, Palette, Color picker and so on), so a screen reader's landmark list jumps straight to it.
• The menu bar is one stop for Tab. Left and Right (or Home and End) move between the menus, and Down, Enter or Space opens one. Inside a menu, Up and Down move, typing a letter jumps to the next item starting with it, Right opens a submenu and Left closes it, and Esc closes the menu. With a menu open, Left and Right hop to the neighboring menus. When the menu bar is docked down a side, Up and Down move between the menus instead.
• Panel menus. In any panel, Shift+F10 or the Menu key opens the panel's menu, the same one a right-click opens (The workspace).
• Resizing panels. Tab to the line between two panels and use the arrow keys (The workspace).

Drawing with the keyboard

Put the focus on the canvas (with Tab or the Skip to canvas link), and a pixel cursor appears where the pointer last was, or in the middle of the sprite. Then:

Every tool works this way except the Hand: brushes paint, shapes stretch from where the pen went down to where it comes up, selection tools select, and the Move drags. The canvas scrolls to keep the cursor in view, and in tiled mode the cursor wraps around the edges.

When a move or transform is waiting to be applied, or a multi-step tool such as the Polygon is waiting for its last point, Enter finishes that instead of putting the pen down.

Keyboard drawing starts when the canvas gets the focus from the keyboard: Tab to it, or use the skip link. Clicking the canvas with the mouse turns it off again, so mouse users keep the arrow keys, Space and Enter for their usual jobs, as in Aseprite: the arrows move the selected pixels, or step through frames and layers; holding Space pans; and Enter plays and pauses the animation. After a click, Tab away and back to draw with the keyboard again.

With a screen reader, the canvas is announced with the sprite's name and size, the active tool and the zoom. The cursor's position ("x 12, y 7") is read once it stops moving, then "Pen down", "Pen up", or "Applied at..." for a single press, and "edge" when the cursor can't go further.

Keyboard in the panels

Sprite tabs. The tabs above the canvas are one stop for Tab:

• Left, Right, Home and End switch sprites;
• Alt+Left and Alt+Right move the tab along the row (and say where it went);
• F2 renames the sprite, and Del closes it;
• Enter on a sprite whose cloud copy changed lets you choose which copy to keep.

The palette is also one stop for Tab, on the selected swatch:

• the arrow keys, Home and End move between swatches, and Shift with an arrow selects a range (to sort, for example);
• Enter or Space makes the swatch the foreground color, and Shift+Enter the background color;
• Alt with an arrow moves the swatch in the palette;
• F2 edits the swatch's color, and Del removes it.

The new foreground or background color, and a swatch's new place, are read out to screen readers. See Color and palettes.

The timeline. The cels form a grid with one Tab stop, the active cel:

• the arrow keys move to the next cel (and make its layer and frame active);
• Shift with an arrow extends the cel selection, and Esc clears it;
• Alt+Left and Alt+Right move the cel's frame (or the selected frames) one place, and say where they went;
• Alt+Shift with an arrow nudges the selected cels;
• the Menu key opens the cel's right-click menu.

On a frame number, Alt+Left and Alt+Right move that frame too. On a layer's name, F2 renames it. On a tag, Enter or Space makes it the tag that plays, and Alt+Left and Alt+Right move it a frame (its ends take Left and Right to resize it). See Animation and the timeline.

Notifications

Messages appear in the bottom-left corner and are read out by screen readers. Errors, and messages with a button, stay until you close them. Other messages stay for at least 8 seconds, longer the more there is to read (up to 20 seconds), and they wait while your pointer or focus is on them, or while the browser tab is in the background. At most five show at once.

Touch screens

• Drawing: one finger (or a pen) draws with the active tool. A pen's pressure sets the brush size from the start (only a pen's: a finger draws at the full size). It can also drive the brush size, angle and a color gradient (Dynamics in the tool options; see Tools). A pen's eraser end erases: the editor switches to the Eraser while you use it and back afterwards.
• Drawing with a pen only: the first time you draw with a pen on a touch screen, the editor asks whether to draw with the pen only. Choose Pen only (or turn off Settings > Draw with Finger later) and one finger pans the canvas instead of drawing, so a hand resting on the screen leaves no marks. Pinching and the two- and three-finger taps work the same either way.
• Zoom and pan: put two fingers on the canvas and pinch to zoom, or move them together to pan. A single finger waits a moment before it draws, so starting a pinch never leaves a mark. With the Hand, a second finger turns the pan into a pinch. Other fingers and your palm are ignored while a stroke is in progress.
• Undo and redo: tap the canvas with two fingers to undo, or with three fingers to redo. Tap quickly and keep your fingers still; a tap that moves the view slightly puts it back.
• Colors: tap a palette swatch for the foreground color. For the background, tap it and then the palette's background button (there's no right-click on a touch screen).
• The timeline scrolls with your finger. A tap selects a cel or frame. Press and hold for half a second, then drag, to select a range; press and hold and let go without moving to open the right-click menu.
• Panels: press and hold a panel for a moment before dragging it. On a phone or a small window the editor switches to a compact layout, where panels open as sheets over the canvas; see Small screens and phones.

The keystroke display

View > Show Keystrokes shows the keys you press on screen, which helps when you record a tutorial or teach a class. Settings > Keystrokes... chooses whether it shows and which corner of the window or the canvas it sits in.

Known limits

• The canvas has no keyboard equivalent of a right-click, so keyboard drawing always uses the foreground color.