Keyboard shortcuts are a lifesaver. Honestly, anyone who edits knows how much time you’ll save using a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro.

How to create a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro

The use of shortcuts whilst editing in Adobe Premiere Pro will help you save a considerable amount of time every day. 

Using a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro allows you to speed up the editing process as you don’t have to trawl through the menus to find a tool to help you clip a bit of footage. 

These shortcuts in Adobe Premiere Pro allow you to speed up your workflow and create a much faster, and efficient working process. 

This, in turn, will help you finish your work much quicker, leaving you with more time to relax or work on more projects. 

In today’s article, we will look at how to create a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro and add multiple keyboard shortcuts to one command. We will also look into how to update existing keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro, and the basic shortcuts Premiere Pro offers up as standard.

Let’s dive into “How to create a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro”.

How to create a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro

To create a new keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro, simply navigate to ”Premiere Pro” and click “Keyboard Shortcuts”.

How to create a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro

This will open up a menu where you can view your existing shortcuts and can create new shortcuts. 

Keyboard Shortcuts Panel

To create a new shortcut in Premiere Pro, you need to search for the command you want to relate the shortcut. 

For this example, we will use “Mark In”. 

Firstly type in your desired command into the search bar at the bottom left-hand corner. 

Type in your keyboard shortcut

To create the shortcut, simply click the x to delete the current shortcut and you will be left with an empty box beside.

"Mark In"


Now begin to type which keys you want to assign as the shortcut for “Mark In”. Once you’ve typed in the key into the box it will show you if it’s already assigned, if it is, choose another. Once you’ve found the key, you simply hit “Enter” and assign by clicking the “OK” button in the right-hand corner. 

There you have it, that is how to create a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro.

Something you may like to read: A beginners guide to Adobe Premiere Pro: Learn Premiere Pro in 15 minutes

How to add multiple keyboard shortcuts to one command

Next up, we will look at how to add multiple keyboard shortcuts to one command. It’s a pretty cool trick, especially if you have multiple editors using the same program as some of the editors may be used to DaVinci Resolve, rather than Premiere Pro. So they like to assign their DaVinci Resolve shortcuts to Premiere Pro to help them work much more efficiently. 

It’s pretty simple to achieve. 

Simply find the command you want to create a shortcut for and double click on the already assigned shortcut’s right-hand side. 

This will open up a little box to the right, and you can assign another key for the command shortcut. 

Assign another key for the command shortcut

There you have it; you have successfully added multiple keyboard shortcuts to one command.

How to update existing keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro

Here is how you can update existing keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro. 

When you open the keyboard shortcut window, you will notice the buttons are green, purple or both. This shows that the keys have been assigned a command or multiple shortcuts.

Green and Purple Shortcut Key

The green colour means that this is a secondary panel shortcut. Secondary panel shortcuts are shortcuts that are used within an individual window, meaning that if the key is both purple and green, the green overwrites the shortcut within the specific panel. 

The purple colour means that it’s an application shortcut. It’s one of the more commonly used shortcuts within Premiere Pro; an example would be to save your work.

Multiple shortcuts assigned in Premiere Pro

For instance, if we select the ‘G’ key on the keyboard, it has two commands. 

To change this shortcut, simply click within the box, and search for the new command or shortcut you wish to associate with it.

There you have it; you will have updated existing keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro to suit your personal editing preference.

An article you may life: 6 ways to optimise Premiere Pro’s performance

Default Keyboard Shortcuts: Overview

In Premiere Pro, there are two main types of shortcuts that you can use. These are Panel Shortcuts and Application Shortcuts. Here we will explore the different types of keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro.

Panel shortcuts are only in use when you are working from a specific panel within Premiere Pro. Whereas, application shortcuts you can use across the application without a panel in use. 

Regarding the above to shortcut segments, Panel and Application Shortcuts. We can break this down a little more granular. 

We can break the shortcuts into four more sections. These are Clipboard, Command, Tool and Navigation Shortcuts. Here’s a brief breakdown of the four shortcuts: 

Clipboard ShortcutsThese are copy and paste based shortcuts, including basic and advanced shortcuts.
Command ShortcutsPerforms a task. I.e saving your project. 
Tool ShortcutsThis is a shortcut related to a tool, for example the cutting tool. 
Navigation ShortcutsShortcuts that help review your projects within Premiere Pro

Clipboard Shortcuts

Your working through your project but you need to make some bulk actions, like copy a part of the clip throughout your project. These shortcuts will be your go to shortcuts to save you a hell of a lot of time. 

They’re pretty simple commands, but boy do they save you time! Let’s have a look at the clipboard shortcuts below.

ShortcutsWindowsMac OS
UndoCtrl+ZCmd+Z
RedoCtrl+Shift+ZShift+Cmd+Z
CutCtrl+XCmd+X
CopyCtrl+CCmd+C
PasteCtrl+VCmd+V
Paste InsertCtrl+Shift+VShift+Cmd+V
Paste AttributesCtrl+Alt+VOpt+Cmd+V
ClearDeleteForward Delete
Clear In & OutCtrl+Shift+XOpt+X
Ripple DeleteShift+DeleteShift+Forward Delete
DuplicateCtrl+Shift+/Shift+Cmd+/
Select AllCtrl+ACmd+A
Deselect AllCtrl+Shift+AShift+Cmd+A
FindCtrl+FCmd+F
Edit OriginalCtrl+ECmd+E

Command shortcuts

Up next are the command shortcuts. Command shortcuts are any shortcut that you would find in the File Menu.

Using these command shortcuts allow you to save, copy and in general action a lot more items in a quicker space of time. They are incredibly useful task-based shortcuts. 
These command shortcuts can be found below.

ShortcutWindowsMac OS
New Project/ProductionCtrl+Alt+NOpt+Cmd+N
New SequenceCtrl+NCmd+N
New BinCtrl+B Cmd+B
TitleCtrl+TCmd+T
Open Project/ProductionCtrl+OCmd+O
Browse in Adobe BridgeCtrl+Alt+OOpt+Cmd+O
Close ProjectCtrl+Shift+WShift+Cmd+W
CloseCtrl+WCmd+W
SaveCtrl+SCmd+S
Save AsCtrl+Shift+SShift+Cmd+S
Save a CopyCtrl+Alt+SOpt+Cmd+S
Import from Media BrowserCtrl+Alt+IOpt+Cmd+I
Import MediaCtrl+ICmd+I
Export MediaCtrl+MCmd+M
Get Properties for SelectionCtrl+Shift+HShift+Cmd+H
Exit/Quit Premiere ProCtrl+QCmd+Q

Tool Shortcuts

Tool shortcuts are simply put, shortcuts that help you edit your footage. Namely tools like the Ripple Edit Tool or the Pen Tool can be accessed by a simple tap of the keyboard. 

Rather than trawling through your application window, as a lot of the time you will want to switch in between each tool frequently. 

So the shortcuts allow you to save a considerable amount of time. 

Here’s the overview of the Tool Shortcuts below.

ShortcutWindowsMac OS
Selection ToolVV
Track Select Forward ToolAA
Track Select Backward ToolShift+AShift+A
Ripple Edit ToolBB
Rolling Edit ToolNN
Rate Stretch ToolRR
Razor ToolCC
Slip ToolYY
Slide ToolUU
Pen ToolPP
Hand ToolHH
Zoom ToolZZ

Navigation Shortcuts

Finally, the last type of shortcut. The navigation shortcuts are the shortcuts that allow you to navigate through your clips, playback sections and so forth. They’re all about the playback of the footage. 

You can use these shortcuts to set In and out points etc. Here’s a quick overview of the shortcuts for both Mac and Windows.

ShortcutsWindowsMac OS
Selection ToolVV
Track Select Forward ToolAA
Track Select Backward ToolShift+AShift+A
Ripple Edit ToolBB
Rolling Edit ToolNN
Rate Stretch ToolRR
Razor ToolCC
Slip ToolYY
Slide ToolUU
Pen ToolPP
Hand ToolHH
Zoom ToolZZ

By using a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro, you can considerably increase the efficiency of your video editing workflow ten-fold. The more you use these shortcuts the faster your post-production process takes, allowing you to work on more projects, or free up more time for you to relax. 

The more you use these, the easier these shortcuts will become to remember. Allowing you to fly through your edits, and saving hours over the course of a week. 

We hope this article on How to create a keyboard shortcut in Premiere Pro and the basic keyboard shortcuts for Premiere Pro was both helpful and entertaining. 

Scroll below to see more of our helpful Premiere Pro resources, and follow us over on YouTube for our in-depth and intuitive tips on filmmaking.

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