Help:Keyboard shortcuts

MediaWiki Handbook: Contents, Readers, Editors, Moderators, System admins +/-

For changing the shortcuts, see User Styles.

The MediaWiki software has several keyboard shortcuts which allows users to perform most of the common editing operations by only using the keyboard.

This article lists the default English shortcuts, and suggests more appropriate, intuitive shortcuts for other Wikipedias.

In some systems, the access key is the Alt key. In this case, to perform a keyboard shortcut, hold down the Alt key, then select the shortcut key. For example, to login, hold down the Alt key, then press the character o key (see Default Shortcuts below), i.e., Alt+o.

In other systems, the access key is the two Shift and Alt keys (and not just the Alt key alone). In this case, hold down both the Shift and Alt keys, then press the shortcut key, e.g., to login, press Shift+Alt+o (i.e., Shift and Alt, then the character "o"). You may need to experiment to find out what the access key for your system is.

Default Shortcuts

This is the list of default shortcuts. The first column should be self-explanatory in most situations. If you find that it isn't, please feel free to edit this section for future users.

To get the shortcuts, press the "accesskey" of your system (see comments above on how to get the "accesskey" of your system), then press the shortcut character shown in the second column in the table below. For example, if Alt was the accesskey of your system, to login, press Alt and then the character o; your browser should then automatically be pointed to the login page.

accesskey name	keyboard key
accesskey-addsection	+
accesskey-anontalk	n
accesskey-anonuserpage	.
accesskey-article	a
accesskey-compareselectedversions	v
accesskey-contributions	?
accesskey-currentevents	?
accesskey-delete	d
accesskey-edit	e
accesskey-emailuser	?
accesskey-help	?
accesskey-history	h
accesskey-login	o
accesskey-logout	o
accesskey-mainpage	z
accesskey-minoredit	i
accesskey-move	m
accesskey-mycontris	y
accesskey-mytalk	n
accesskey-portal	?
accesskey-preferences	?
accesskey-preview	p
accesskey-protect	=
accesskey-randompage	x
accesskey-recentchanges	r
accesskey-recentchangeslinked	c
accesskey-save	s
accesskey-search	f
accesskey-sitesupport	?
accesskey-specialpage	?
accesskey-specialpages	q
accesskey-talk	t
accesskey-undelete	d
accesskey-unwatch	w
accesskey-upload	u
accesskey-userpage	.
accesskey-viewsource	e
accesskey-watch	w
accesskey-watchlist	l
accesskey-whatlinkshere	b

The list above is targeted at International/English users, therefore it's ordered by the name of the function, not by the key.

The site's global access keys are in the corresponding JavaScript for the skins. For example, in older versions of MediaWiki, the keys for Monobook were defined in the (protected) page MediaWiki:Monobook.js, which has been deprecated (i.e., no longer in use in newer versions of MediaWiki). For MediaWiki 1.10.1, the access keys are defined in the file wiki/skins/common/wikibits.js as noted above. The file Monobook.js does not exists any more in newer versions of MediaWiki.

Finding the access keys

For MediaWiki 1.10.1, if you have access to the wiki/ directory, a better way to find the access key is to look in the file wiki/skins/common/wikibits.js. The access key is encoded in the lines

/**
 * Set the accesskey prefix based on browser detection.
 */
var tooltipAccessKeyPrefix = 'alt-'; 
if (is_opera) {
        tooltipAccessKeyPrefix = 'shift-esc-';
} else if (is_safari
           || navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('mac') != -1
           || navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('konqueror') != -1 ) {
        tooltipAccessKeyPrefix = 'ctrl-';
} else if (is_ff2_x11 || is_ff2_win) {
        tooltipAccessKeyPrefix = 'alt-shift-';
}
var tooltipAccessKeyRegexp = /\[(ctrl-)?(alt-)?(shift-)?(esc-)?.\]$/;

"ff2" stands for "Firefox 2" and "win" for "Windows". Thus, if you used Firefox 2 under either Linux or Windows, your access key would be the Shift and Alt keys. Indeed, if you looked at the top of the code listing, you would see the definition of "ff2_x11" and "ff2_win":

// For accesskeys
var is_ff2_win = (clientPC.indexOf('firefox/2')!=-1 || clientPC.indexOf('minefield/3')!=-1) && clientPC.indexOf('windows')!=-1;
var is_ff2_x11 = (clientPC.indexOf('firefox/2')!=-1 || clientPC.indexOf('minefield/3')!=-1) && clientPC.indexOf('x11')!=-1;

Translator's View

Various Wikipedias will most probably want to use localized versions for the shortcuts. The challenge in this case is finding appropriate shortcuts without duplicating the respective keys. Here is what we suggest as a possible process: use the list below, copying the Wiki source of the list in a local text file, and fill in the shortcuts you feel appropriate in your own language in the second column. Always keep the list ordered by the second column. That way it will always be easy to spot duplicate shortcuts, because all keys you propose for various operations will be easily verifiable by checking the alphabetically ordered list. Also, you will be able to easily find the free keys, so you will be able to assign meaninful functions for them.

The first column in the "table" below is shown for reference, because some key duplicates make sense, and they have already been assigned in duplicate by the developers (e.g. delete/undelete, log in/log out or watch/unwatch).

The first four entries have default values filled in for "your" language (in the second column) for exemplifying reasons; you are encouraged to override those values if that makes sense in your language.

accesskey name	keyboard key
=	accesskey-protect
.	accesskey-userpage
.	accesskey-anonuserpage
+	accesskey-addsection
a	accesskey-article
b	accesskey-whatlinkshere
c	accesskey-recentchangeslinked
d	accesskey-delete
d	accesskey-undelete
e	accesskey-edit
e	accesskey-viewsource
f	accesskey-search
h	accesskey-history
i	accesskey-minoredit
l	accesskey-watchlist
m	accesskey-move
n	accesskey-anontalk
n	accesskey-mytalk
o	accesskey-login
o	accesskey-logout
p	accesskey-preview
q	accesskey-specialpages
r	accesskey-recentchanges
s	accesskey-save
t	accesskey-talk
u	accesskey-upload
v	accesskey-compareselectedversions
w	accesskey-watch
w	accesskey-unwatch
x	accesskey-randompage
y	accesskey-mycontris
z	accesskey-mainpage
?	accesskey-portal
?	accesskey-preferences
?	accesskey-sitesupport
?	accesskey-specialpage
?	accesskey-contributions
?	accesskey-currentevents
?	accesskey-emailuser
?	accesskey-help

The list above is targeted at the translator, and it's meant to be functional rather than informational. Therefore it may look inaesthetic in this view; that's because it's meant to be useful in source view, where translators can edit it by continually re-ordering the rows in the list while defining their localized list of shortcuts.