50+ Awesome Time Saving WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’re like me, you want to bang out a blog post as quickly as possible. After all, we’re busy people with lots of very important things to do (i.e. sleep).

And while I’ll spend an hour sweating out a gut wrenching workout at the gym, I find it tedious reaching over to use my mouse. It’s barely 10 inches from where my hands sit on my keyboard, but it’s extra effort and I like to be efficient. Why reach over to use my mouse to click on a tab when there is a quicker way to do it with my keyboard?

Luckily, WordPress includes a bunch of nifty shortcuts that will save you time and unnecessarily expending calories clicking your mouse.

Everything, Even the Kitchen Sink

First things first. You need to open the Kitchen Sink. This tiny feature reveals a whole other line of options to help you make the most of the post interface, such as font styles, copy and pasting from Word and one of my favourites, removing formatting.

And the option we’re after is Help. So either click the button or hit Shift + Alt + H.

The Rich Editor Help window will open. Click on Hotkeys to reveal some shortcut goodness.

No more having to click the B button with your mouse to make some text bold! There’s also no need to switch out of the Visual editor and into the Text editor to enclose < h2 > tabs around a heading. And instead of click Add Media to insert an image in your post you can simply hit Command + M for iOS or CTRL + M for Windows to quickly bring up the media manager. Sweet!

But that’s not all. There are even more shortcuts that aren’t displayed in Rich Editor Help.

Save Time Sifting Through Comments

Moderating comments can be a laborious task. Thanks to shortcuts, you can speed up the process and get your comments sorted in no time.

Shortcuts to browse and moderate comments was introduced in WordPress 2.7. You will need to turn this feature on, so go to Users > Your Profile and tick “Enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation.”

Now that’s done, head to your Comments page by clicking the tab in the admin panel.

You can navigate up and down through you comments using the J and K keys, with the selected comment turning light blue. Give it a go.

When a comment is selected you can simply press:

• A – Approve the comment
• S – Mark the comment as spam
• D – Deletes the comment
• Z – Restores the comment
• U – Unapproves the comment, putting it back into moderation
• R – Reply to the comment (Hit Esc to cancel the reply)
• Q – Activates Quick Edit for inline editing of the comment

There are also bulk actions. To select multiple comments, hit the X key for the currently selected comment.

• Shift + A – Approves the checked comments
• Shift + S – Marks the checked comments as spam
• Shift + D – Deletes the checked comments
• Shift + U – Unapproves the checked comments
• Shift + T – Moves the checked comments to the Trash
• Shift + Z – Restores the check comments from the Trash

Shortcuts for the Visual Editor

We already know some of the shortcuts for the Visual Editor, but there are a few cool extras.

• Shift + Alt + Z – Show/hide the Kitchen Sink
• Ctrl/Command + S – Save your draft post
• Shift + Alt + N – Open Spell Check
• Ctrl/Command + 8 – Format

Beautiful Distraction Free Writing

One of my favorite things about the Post Editor is Distraction Free Writing. It’s provides a simple and beautiful backdrop for your words. After all, it’s just a white background and your text floating across the screen.

To turn Distraction Free Writing on and off hit Shift + Alt + W.

So that’s that. I’m now so used to the shortcuts that I unintentionally use them in other text editors. I particularly love being able to quickly add images and links with little fuss thanks to these time saving shortcuts.

Have you come across any other shortcuts I missed? Tell us in the comments below.

Image credits: Unhindered by Talent.

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