Manual: Setup/Keyboard

Keyboard tab of the settings dialog

In this page you can choose or edit keyboard shortcuts for many of the actions in OpenMPT, which are always active unless the input focus is within a textbox. OpenMPT keeps an internal default layout, but you can save your own or load others, for example from the ExtraKeymaps folder in OpenMPT’s application folder by clicking on the “Import Keys” button near the middle of the page. The list of the current shortcuts are kept in the Keybindings.mkb file in the %APPDATA%\OpenMPT folder (or OpenMPT’s application folder if in portable mode), but with this dialog, you can save these shortcuts in a separate file for safekeeping or sharing. The following is a description of the various items on the page.

To view or edit keyboard shortcuts, first find the context to which the keypress would be applied by clicking on the Category field. A popup menu will open and you can choose the context to view. If you wanted, for example, to assign the Q key to the base octave C when inputting a note in a pattern, this keypress would be needed in the Pattern Editor for the note column. So you would select “Pattern Editor – Note Column” from the popup menu. The list of assignable note messages will be displayed in the field below it. Select the “Base octave C” entry and select it. Alternatively, if you know (parts of) the shortcut name, you can type it into the “Find” box.

Limited support for MIDI message handling is also there: Additionally to computer keyboard keys, MIDI CCs and MIDI note events may be used to trigger shortcuts. To make use of them, first enable MIDI Input. Then, go to this settings dialog, focus the Key input field and send the wanted MIDI CC or note using your MIDI device.

It is possible to assign the same key combination to several shortcuts by means of the hidden setting Misc.AllowMultipleCommandsPerKey, but a warning about this potentially unwanted situation is emitted if you are trying to re-use an existing key combination that may be conflicting.

Shortcut List

Select Category

Shows the current set of functions you can assign shortcuts to. Clicking this field opens a popup menu so you can choose which set of shortcuts you wish to edit or assign.

Action List

Clicking on one of the entries selects it for key assignment. See the Keyboard Actions table for a description of all available actions.

Find

This can be used to search for a specific shortcut in the complete shortcut list by its name. Instead of searching by name, you can also search by shortcut. Just click on the Key edit box and enter the key combination that you want to find (e.g. pressing Ctrl+C would bring up the “Copy” shortcut when using the default configuration). Focus the edit box again to remove the search term.

Key Setup

Key setup choice

This field lets you switch between the choices of key assignments for this action. If there is no key assigned, it will display <new>; otherwise, the text will read "Choice x (of y)" where x is the number of the current shortcut and y is the total count of this action’s current key assignments. Clicking in this field will display other choices, where you can select the one to edit.

Key

Shows the key assignment for this shortcut. Clicking in this field (after choosing an action in the Action List) will “listen” for a new key assignment. Any keypresses or recognized MIDI events will be entered into this field and assigned to the action as a keyboard shortcut. In order to deactivate “listening” you must use the mouse to focus another field.

Restore

Clicking on this button resets the key assignments of this action to when the action was first selected.

On Key Down/Hold/Up

When any of these are checked, the action will be activated at the corresponding event of the keypress, either when the key is pressed down, when it is held down, and / or when the key is released.

Delete

Clicking on this button deletes the current key assignment. If there were other keyboard shortcuts for this action, they remain.

Repeat notes on hold

These two buttons are a shortcut for enabling or disabling the “On Key Hold” property for all note keys.

Chord Detect Interval

If you have the Pattern Editor’s Edit Step setting set to some other value than 0 and have a record group set up, OpenMPT will put all notes detected within the Chord Detect Interval on the same row, regardless of the Edit Step setting, i.e. the notes are interpreted as a chord.

Import Keys

Use this button to import an .mkb (OpenMPT keyboard layout) file. This allows you to use an alternate set of pre-defined keyboard assignments. In the side bar of the file dialog, a shortcut to the ExtraKeymaps can be found to quickly jump to the alternative keyboard layouts shipped with OpenMPT.

Export Keys

Use this button to export the current set of keyboard shortcuts to a keyboard layout file. This is helpful not only for multiple users of one OpenMPT setup, but also for testing different setups for ease of use.

Restore Default Configuration

Clicking on this button restores all keybindings to their default keys.

Error Log

Shows conflicts between key assignments. Conflicts occur when one keypress or combination keypress is already assigned to an action within the same context or a parent context. A problem may also occur when modifier keys (Shift, Ctrl, Alt or the Windows key) are expected but another key is assigned. In this case, OpenMPT will not allow the non-modifier key to be assigned.

Clear Log

Clicking this button deletes all the text in the log window.