Keyboard & mouse shortcuts

This is the complete shortcut reference for Snipdeck, grouped by where you use it: capturing snips, the annotation and collage editors, and the gallery. For the why-and-how behind the capture model, see the capture shortcuts guide; this page is the quick lookup.

How to read this page

Snipdeck has three kinds of shortcuts:

Capture gestures — a held modifier plus a left-mouse drag. These decide what happens to the snip you draw.
Global hotkeys — keyboard-only shortcuts that work from anywhere, even when Snipdeck is not focused. These are registered system-wide and are configurable.
In-window shortcuts — keys that work inside a specific Snipdeck window, such as the annotation editor or the gallery.

Modifier keys are written in code formatting: Win, Ctrl, Shift, Alt.

Capture (mouse + modifier)

The core gesture is hold Win and drag a region with the left mouse button. Add modifiers to change what happens to the resulting snip. The modifiers must be held before and during the drag — Snipdeck reads the modifier state at the moment the drag begins.

Shortcut	Floating snip	Clipboard	Added to gallery
`Win` + drag	Yes	—	Yes
`Win`+`Ctrl` + drag	Yes	Yes	Yes
`Win`+`Alt` + drag	—	Yes	—
`Win`+`Shift` + drag	—	—	Yes
`Win`+`Ctrl`+`Shift` + drag	—	Yes	Yes

Note: Win+Alt + drag is the only combination that does not add the snip to the gallery — it is a throwaway “copy this region” capture.

Freeze-first capture

Shortcut	What it does
`Win`+`Shift`+`Space`, then drag	Dims and freezes the screen, then lets you select on the still image

Press Win+Shift+Space to snapshot and freeze the screen before you select, so hover-only UI — tooltips, dropdowns, menus — stays captured even after your cursor moves. The next left-drag draws the region on the frozen image; you do not need to keep holding Win for that drag.

For a full walkthrough of the matrix and freeze-first capture, see Capture shortcuts.

Global hotkeys

In addition to the Win + drag gestures, Snipdeck registers a set of system-wide keyboard hotkeys that work from any application. These mirror the capture matrix and the visibility toggle, so you can drive Snipdeck without the mouse-down modifiers.

Default hotkey	Action
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`A`	New snip (arms a region capture, like `Win` + drag)
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`C`	New snip and copy to clipboard
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`X`	Clipboard-only capture (not added to the gallery)
`Win`+`Alt`+`H`	Toggle visibility of on-screen (floating) snips
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`G`	Gallery capture (saved to the gallery)

Tip: These five hotkeys are configurable. Each is stored as a string in settings.json (the hotkey_snip, hotkey_snip_clip, hotkey_clip_only, hotkey_toggle_visibility, and hotkey_gallery keys). The format is modifier tokens joined by +, ending in a key — for example CtrlShift+A or Ctrl+Alt+F12. See Settings for the full key reference.

The recognized modifier tokens are Ctrl (or Control), Shift, Alt, and Win (also accepted as Super, Cmd, or Meta). Keys can be letters A–Z, digits 0–9, function keys F1–F12, or named keys such as Space, Enter, Delete, Insert, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, and PrintScreen.

Tray

Snipdeck lives in the system tray. One tray action is worth knowing as a keyboard-light alternative to the capture gestures.

Action	What it does
Tray icon → New Snip	Arms a one-shot drag capture without holding `Win`; the next left-drag captures a region, then disarms

The gallery

These work in the main Snipdeck window (the gallery).

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl`+`F`	Jump to the search box

The status bar at the bottom of the gallery advertises Ctrl+F search as a reminder. Once the search box is focused, type to filter; full-text search covers OCR text, window metadata, monitor, and path. The filter pills (Status, Content, Size, Date, Sort) and the search box are also reachable with the mouse — see Gallery and search for the full filtering model.

Note: Right-clicking a gallery thumbnail (or a floating snip) opens the context menu with Copy, OCR, Annotate, Share, Transform, Crop, and Delete actions. These are mouse-driven rather than keyboard shortcuts.

The annotation editor

Open the editor by right-clicking any snip and choosing Annotate. Inside the editor, these keys are active:

Shortcut	Action
`Esc`	Cancel and close the editor without saving
`Ctrl`+`Z`	Undo the last stroke
`Ctrl`+`Y`	Redo

The same undo, redo, and clear actions are also available as buttons in the editor’s toolbar. For tools, the color wheel, size and opacity sliders, and zoom, see Annotation editor.

The collage editor

The collage editor combines several snips into one image.

Shortcut	Action
`Esc`	Cancel and close the collage editor

See Collage for arranging cells and exporting the result.