How to add keyboard shortcuts to any website

Why shortcuts

If you work through a list on a website every day, such as tickets, emails, search results, orders or pull requests, the mouse is the slow part. Point, click, read, go back, scroll, point, click. Keyboard shortcuts turn that into a rhythm: next, open, back, next. Sites like Gmail and GitHub have had J and K for years because it works. Most other sites don't.

The built-in way

Check whether the site already has shortcuts. Many web apps list theirs when you press the question mark key, Shift and the slash key. Others document them in a help page, or switch them on in settings.

Chrome itself has shortcuts for the browser: Ctrl+L to the address bar, Ctrl+Tab to the next tab, Space and Shift+Space to scroll a page. They don't know anything about the items on a particular site.

The manual way

Without shortcuts, the keyboard can still help a little:

• Tab moves through links and buttons on the page, and Enter opens the one that's focused. On a long list, that's many presses per item.
• Ctrl+F and a word from the item you want, then Escape and Enter, jumps to and opens a link by its text.
• Alt+Left (Cmd+[ on a Mac) goes back.

These help, and they're not the same as moving item by item.

Make it permanent with a tool

A userscript can add real shortcuts to a site. It's a short piece of JavaScript that runs on a website you choose. A shortcuts userscript listens for key presses on that page, keeps track of which item in the list is selected, highlights it so you can see where you are, moves the selection with J and K, and opens it with O. The important detail is to ignore keys while you're typing in a search box or a comment field, so pressing J in a sentence types a J instead of jumping.

ScriptPanda is a Chrome extension that writes userscripts from a description. Open its side panel on the page with the list, paste the request at the end of this guide, and it builds the shortcuts for that page's list and installs them. It can see how the page is built, so you describe the list in plain words, and you can choose any keys you like.

Pressing keys doesn't call AI, so using the shortcuts doesn't use any of your plan's requests. Building them and changing them do.

More shortcuts people ask for:

• X to tick the selected item's checkbox, for bulk actions.
• E to archive, or S to star, by clicking that item's own button.
• Question mark to show a small panel listing your shortcuts.
• G then H to go to the site's home page.

Choosing keys

Pick keys the site doesn't already use, and avoid ones the browser uses, like Ctrl+W or Ctrl+T, which close and open tabs before a page ever sees them. Single letters are fastest, and they're safe as long as the tool ignores them while you type.

Limits

The shortcuts work on the site they were built for, in Chrome on your computer, and only while the page is open. They act on what's on the page, so moving to the next item doesn't load another page of results unless you ask for that. Some sites capture keys themselves, which can conflict with yours. Pick different keys if that happens. If the site changes its layout and the selection stops moving, open ScriptPanda on the page, say what broke, and ask it to fix the tool for the page as it is now.