Keymap Customization

Keys

Available Keys

When customizing keymaps it’s useful to use keys which won’t conflict with Blender’s default keymap.

Here are keys which aren’t used and aren’t likely to be used in the future.

F-Keys (F5 - F8)

These F-keys (including modifier combination) have been intentionally kept free for users to bind their own keys to.

OSKey (also known as the Windows-Key, Cmd or Super)

Blender doesn’t use this key for any bindings.

macOS is an exception, where Cmd replaces Ctrl except in cases it would conflict with the system’s key bindings.

Modifier Double Click

Binding modifier keys as primary keys is supported, to avoid conflicts with regular usage you can bind them to double click.

Multi-Action Keys

Click/Drag

It’s possible to configure a single key to perform multiple operations using Click event instead of Press. Then you may bind Drag to a separate action.

This is useful for mixing actions where one uses a drag event, e.g: Toggle a setting using with Tab, drag to open a pie menu showing all options related to the setting.

This is used in the default keymap in the 3D Viewport, Alt-MMB dragging in different directions rotates the view.

Common Operations

This section lists useful generic operations which can be used.

Key Bindings for Pop-Ups

Menus and panels can be assigned key shortcuts, even if they’re only accessible from submenus elsewhere.

Open a Pop-up Menu (wm.call_menu)

Open any menu on key press.

Open a Pie Menu (wm.call_menu_pie)

Open any pie menu on key press.

Open a Panel (wm.call_panel)

Open a pop-up panel (also known as a pop-over).

Menu & Panel Identifiers

To find the name of a menu, enable the preference Interface ‣ Display ‣ Python Tooltips.

Then hover the cursor over the popover button or menu item. For submenus you will need to use the back arrow to prevent the submenu from opening and gaining focus.

Key Bindings for Properties

There are many properties you might want to bind a key with. To avoid having to define operators for each property, there are generic operators for this purpose:

Operators for adjusting properties begin with wm.context_.

Some of these include:

• wm.context_toggle toggle a Boolean property.

• wm.context_cycle_enum cycle an enum property forwards or backwards.

• wm.context_menu_enum show a pop-up menu for an enum property.

• wm.context_pie_enum show a pie menu for an enum property.

• wm.context_scale_float scale a number (used for increasing / decreasing brush size for example).

• wm.context_toggle_enum toggle between two options of an enum.

• wm.context_modal_mouse moving the cursor to interactively change a value.

See bpy.ops.wm for a complete list.

Each of these operators has a data_path setting to reference the property to change.

To find the data_path, basic Python knowledge is needed.

For example, you can use the Python Console to access a Boolean property you wish to map to a key:

bpy.context.object.show_name

To bind this to a key, add a new keymap item using the operator wm.context_toggle with data_path set to object.show_name (notice the bpy.context prefix is implicit).

See bpy.context for other context attributes.

The Python API documentation can be used to find properties or you may use the Python Console’s auto-complete to inspect available properties.