The visual builder supports keyboard shortcuts for common actions. All shortcuts use Cmd on macOS and Ctrl on Windows/Linux.
The visual builder’s keyboard shortcuts cover the whole edit loop: save, navigate sections, toggle editors, undo. All bindings use Cmd on macOS and Ctrl elsewhere, and learning the five core ones roughly doubles editing speed on long pages.
Saving
Cmd+S / Ctrl+S saves all sections by triggering the “Apply to Gutenberg” action. This is the same as clicking the Apply button in the top bar.
Section Management
Cmd+N / Ctrl+N adds a new empty section after the currently selected section.
Cmd+D / Ctrl+D duplicates the currently selected section. The duplicate is inserted immediately after the original.
Cmd+Backspace / Ctrl+Backspace deletes the currently selected section.
Section Reordering
Alt+Arrow Up moves the selected section up one position.
Alt+Arrow Down moves the selected section down one position.
Editor Focus
Alt+1 focuses the HTML editor.
Alt+2 focuses the CSS editor (switches the right pane to CSS if it’s showing JS).
Alt+3 focuses the JavaScript editor (switches the right pane to JS if it’s showing CSS).
Section Navigation
Arrow Up and Arrow Down (when a section item in the sidebar has focus) navigate between sections in the sidebar.
Code Editor Shortcuts
Inside the CodeMirror editors, these additional shortcuts are available.
Tab inserts a tab character (or indents the selection if text is selected).
Shift+Tab outdents the selection.
Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z undoes the last change.
Cmd+Y / Ctrl+Y or Shift+Cmd+Z / Shift+Ctrl+Z redoes the last undone change.
Ctrl+Q folds/unfolds the code block at the cursor position.
Ctrl+Space / Cmd+Space (in the HTML editor only) triggers the CSS class autocomplete popup. This shows class names extracted from your theme’s stylesheets.
Shortcut Isolation
The code editors isolate certain keyboard shortcuts from WordPress and Gutenberg. This means pressing Tab, Cmd+Z, Ctrl+Space, and similar keys inside a code editor won’t trigger WordPress’s own handlers (like Tab switching between blocks). The editors capture these events and handle them internally.
Quick answers to common questions:
What are the essential shortcuts to learn first?
Save (Cmd/Ctrl+S), section navigation, and the editor-focus toggles. Those three keep your hands off the mouse for the entire write-preview-adjust loop, which is where builder time actually goes.
Do shortcuts conflict with browser defaults?
The builder intercepts its bindings while focused, so Cmd+S saves your work instead of the browser dialog. Outside builder focus, browser behavior is untouched.