Keyboard shortcuts

Use Preferences > Keyboard to set your preferred keyboard shortcuts. The following shortcuts are the initial default settings.

• Hit return or enter to start generating.
• Hit "+" or "=" to go faster.
• Hit "-" or "_" to go slower.
• Hit "t" to toggle the Auto Fit option (used when generating).
• Hit "T" to show timing info.
• Hit escape or return or enter or space bar or tab to stop generating.
• Hit escape to abort a script.
• Hit the space bar to step one generation.
• Hit control-space to advance the selection.
• Hit shift-space to advance everything outside the selection.
• Hit the tab key to step by the current increment.
• Hit "z" to undo a recent change.
• Hit "Z" to redo a recently undone change.
• Hit "v" to paste clipboard data into the current pattern.
• Hit "M" to cycle through all paste modes.
• Hit "L" to cycle through all paste locations.
• Hit "c" to cycle through all cursor modes.
• Hit F5 to F9 to set cursor modes.
• Use the shift key to temporarily toggle the zoom in/out cursor.
• Hit "a" to select all cells in the current pattern.
• Hit "k" to remove the selection.
• Hit the delete key to clear all cells inside the selection.
• Hit shift-delete to clear all cells outside the selection.
• Hit "[" or "/" to zoom out.
• Hit "]" or "*" to zoom in.
• Hit "f" to fit the entire pattern in the viewport.
• Hit "F" to fit the entire selection in the viewport.
• Hit "s" to shrink the selection and fit it in the viewport.
• Hit "1"/"2"/"4"/"8"/"6" to set the scale to 1:1/1:2/1:4/1:8/1:16.
• Use the arrow keys or scroll bars to pan around.
• Hit F11 (or F1 on the Mac) to toggle full screen mode.
• Hit "m" or home to put 0,0 in the middle of the viewport.
• Hit "0" to change the origin to the cell under the cursor.
• Hit "9" to restore the true origin.
• Hit "'" to show/hide the tool bar.
• Hit "\" to show/hide the layer bar.
• Hit ";" to show/hide the status bar.
• Hit "e" to toggle showing exact numbers.
• Hit "l" to toggle grid lines.
• Hit "b" to swap the colors used to display cell states.
• Hit "i" to show pattern info.
• Hit "p" to show/hide the pattern folder.
• Hit "P" to show/hide the script folder (think "P" for Perl or Python).
• Hit "," to open the preferences dialog.
• Hit "h" or "?" (or F1 on Windows/Linux) to show the help window.
• Hit alt-"l" (option-"l" on the Mac) to show the Life Lexicon.
• Hit "S" to run Scripts/Python/shift.py.