Description
Files right now is not super accessible by keyboard, with other software like Gdrive, Onedrive and Dropbox having nice keyboard shortcuts for common actions. It would be great if NC also had better keyboard accessibility. Here are the most common actions and their keyboard shortcuts across different software, and any similar actions in other Nextcloud apps also. Since there are sometimes slightly different shortcuts for different actions across softwares, we can't have something that's 100% familiar to everyone, but we can use the most common shortcut key.
UPDATE: as of Jan 2025 Google Drive signicantly changed their shortcuts, leaning towards more Alt-key based combos instead, edited to reflect the updated shortcuts
| Action | Gdrive | Dropbox | Onedrive | Other Nextcloud apps | Recommended shortcut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Navigate through files | ↑ ↓ → ← / k j h l | ↑ ↓ | ↑ ↓ → ← | ↑ ↓ in Mail | ↑ ↓ → ← (left and right to support grid view) |
| Select/unselect | Ctrl+Space | Space | Ctrl+Space | ||
| Select range | Shift+↑ ↓ → ← | ||||
| Select all | Ctrl + a | Ctrl + a | Ctrl + a | Ctrl + a | |
| Unselect all | Esc | Esc | Ctrl + d | Esc (Ctrl + n is used in Firefox for opening a new window, so Esc can be used for unselect as long as no popup is open) | |
| Search | / | / | / | / for quick find | / |
| Delete | Del | Del | Del | Del | |
| Rename | Ctrl+Alt+E or F2 |
F2 | F2 | F2 | |
| Open file/folder | Enter | → | Enter | Enter in Mail | Enter |
| Close open file/popup | Esc | Esc | Esc | ||
| Go up a folder | Alt+g and then p, or Alt+↑ | ← | Alt + ↑ | Alt + ↑ | |
| Upload | Alt+c and then u (upload file), Alt+c and then i (upload folder) | Shift + u (open upload menu) | |||
| Share | Ctrl+Alt+A | s | . (s is used for favouriting) | ||
| Favourite/star | s | s in Mail | s | ||
| Toggle sidebar/details | Alt+g and then d | i | d | ||
| Open actions menu | Alt+a, or Shift+F10 | Shift + F10 | a (we could implement this across all apps) | ||
| Cut/copy/paste | Ctrl+Alt+m (move), Ctrl + c/v (copy/paste) | Ctrl + x/c/v | Ctrl + x/c/v | ||
| Switch grid/list view | Alt+v and then L | v | |||
| Go to navigation | Alt+g and then n | n (we could implement this across all the apps) | |||
| Show keyboard shortcuts | Ctrl+/ | ? | ? | ? |
What do you think?
cc @jancborchardt who also worked on this and @skjnldsv for Files