Extending Shortcut

Shortcut keys within the editor are managed by the “Shortcut Key Manager”. Each shortcut key can be bound to a message, and when the shortcut key is pressed, the bound message will be triggered.

Defining Shortcut

Defining the shortcuts needs to be done in the contributions.shortcuts field of package.json, as follows:

  1. // package.json
  2. {
  3.     "name": "hello-world",
  4.     "panels": {
  5.         "default": {
  6.             "main": "./panel.js"
  7.         }
  8.     },
  9.     "contributions": {
  10.         "messages": {
  11.             "undo": {
  12.                 "title": "i18n:hello.messages.undo.title",
  13.                 "methods": ["say-undo"]
  14.             }
  15.         },
  16.         "shortcuts": [
  17.             {
  18.                 "message": "undo",
  19.                 "when": "panelName === 'hello-world'",
  20.                 "win": "ctrl+z",
  21.                 "mac": "cmd+z",
  22.             }
  23.         ]
  24.     }
  25. }

In this example, we define a shortcut key for the undo operation, which is CTRL + Z on Windows and CMD + Z on macOS.

When the corresponding shortcut key is pressed, the undo message is sent.

Note: This message needs to be defined in contributions.messages, please refer to the documentation Customized Messages.

Parameter descriptions

Below we will see the details of each parameter of contributions.shortcuts.

message

Type {string} Required

Shortcut-bound message that will be sent when this shortcut is triggered. Shortcut pressed messages can only be sent to the current extension.

when

Type {string} Optional

The shortcut will be triggered only under certain conditions.

"when": "PanelName === 'hello-world'" means that the message message will be sent when the shortcut key is pressed when the panel name that gets focus is hello-world.

win

type {string} required

On Windows platform, the keystroke to listen to.

mac

Type {string} Required

On macOS, the keystroke to listen to.