OrcaSlicer Keyboard Shortcuts: Complete Cheat Sheet

TL;DR: Memorize the keys that actually save time in OrcaSlicer. Tested against the 2.3.2 wiki, grouped by panel, with the macOS equivalents and a printable cheat sheet at the bottom.

I lost an embarrassing amount of time to right-click menus before I learned that pressing M jumps straight to the move gizmo. The shortcut that actually broke my mouse-only habit was Ctrl + R for Slice plate, because I’d spent months hunting for the slice button at the top right every time I tweaked a setting.

If you’re clicking everything, you’re paying a tax measured in seconds per action, and it compounds across a busy plate. I’ll walk through every documented OrcaSlicer keyboard shortcut, group by group, the way the official wiki organizes them, and flag the three or four shortcuts almost everyone gets wrong (including a couple I had wrong myself).

What’s in this guide

Global shortcuts (file, edit, the universal commands)
Prepare tab: moving, selecting, and the camera
The gizmo single-key roster
Color painting and the 1-9 filament keys
Preview tab: scrubbing layers and reading G-code
Objects List shortcuts
Windows vs macOS vs Linux
Cheat sheet
FAQ

Global shortcuts: file, edit, and the universal commands

These are the keys that work regardless of which tab you’re on. They’re the ones I’d hammer into muscle memory first because they cover the actions you repeat all day. Every entry below is pulled verbatim from the official OrcaSlicer keyboard shortcuts wiki.

Ctrl + N: New Project
Ctrl + O: Open Project
Ctrl + S: Save Project
Ctrl + Shift + S: Save Project as
Ctrl + I: Import geometry data from STL/STEP/3MF/OBJ/AMF files
Ctrl + G: Export plate sliced file
Ctrl + R: Slice plate
Ctrl + Shift + G: Print plate
Ctrl + X: Cut
Ctrl + C: Copy to clipboard
Ctrl + V: Paste from clipboard
Ctrl + P: Preferences
Ctrl + M: Show/Hide 3Dconnexion devices settings
Ctrl + Tab: Switch table page
Del: Delete selected
?: Show keyboard shortcuts list

The trap here is the slice-vs-export confusion. Ctrl + R slices, Ctrl + G exports the sliced file, and Ctrl + Shift + G sends the print. I used to assume Ctrl + G would slice because “G” feels like “go,” but it doesn’t. Memorize R-for-Slice and you’ll stop sending half-sliced jobs.

The other one worth highlighting is ?, which opens an in-app cheat sheet listing every binding for your current build. As of OrcaSlicer 2.3.1, the popup also reflects swapped mouse buttons if you’ve remapped LMB and RMB in preferences.

Prepare tab: moving, selecting, and the camera

The Prepare tab is where the keyboard pays for itself fastest. The four tabs that make up OrcaSlicer’s UI all have their own bindings, but Prepare is where you spend most of your time arranging, scaling, and orienting parts before you slice.

The camera lives on the mouse: left mouse rotates the view, right mouse pans, and the wheel zooms. Once you’ve got that, the keyboard handles selection and movement.

A: Arrange all objects
Shift + A: Arrange objects on selected plates
Q: Auto orients selected objects
Shift + Q: Auto orients all objects on active plate
Shift + Tab: Collapse/Expand sidebar
Ctrl + Any arrow: Movement in camera space
Alt + Left mouse button: Select a part
Ctrl + Left mouse button: Select multiple objects
Shift + Left mouse button: Select objects by rectangle
Arrow Up: Move selection 10 mm positive Y direction
Arrow Down: Move selection 10 mm negative Y direction
Arrow Left: Move selection 10 mm negative X direction
Arrow Right: Move selection 10 mm positive X direction
Shift + Any arrow: Movement step set to 1 mm
Esc: Deselect all
Ctrl + A: Select all objects
Ctrl + D: Delete all
Ctrl + Z: Undo
Ctrl + Y: Redo
I: Zoom in
O: Zoom out
Tab: Switch between Prepare/Preview

Arrow keys default to 10 mm steps. Hold Shift and they drop to 1 mm. That’s the one I wish I’d known on day one. I’d been clicking into the position field and typing numbers to nudge parts into corners, and the Shift+arrow combo is far faster.

The camera presets are a separate cluster you should at least try once:

Ctrl + 0: Camera view: Default
Ctrl + 1: Camera view: Top
Ctrl + 2: Camera view: Bottom
Ctrl + 3: Camera view: Front
Ctrl + 4: Camera view: Behind
Ctrl + 5: Camera Angle: Left side
Ctrl + 6: Camera Angle: Right side

If you’re checking whether a feature sits flush on the bed, Ctrl + 1 for top-down and Ctrl + 3 for front view will save you a lot of right-mouse orbiting.

The gizmo single-key roster

This section delivers the biggest practical speedup. The left-side gizmo bar holds move, scale, rotate, cut, and paint tools, and each has a single-key binding. No need to aim at a tiny icon when you can tap a letter.

M: Gizmo move
R: Gizmo rotate
S: Gizmo scale
F: Gizmo place face on bed
C: Gizmo cut
B: Gizmo mesh boolean
H: Gizmo FDM paint-on fuzzy skin
L: Gizmo SLA support points
P: Gizmo FDM paint-on seam
T: Gizmo text emboss/engrave
U: Gizmo measure
Y: Gizmo assemble
E: Gizmo brim ears

Three corrections trip up users coming from older guides.

First, L is SLA support points, not FDM support painting. If you tried L expecting the FDM support brush, you hit the wrong gizmo. The wiki lists no single-key shortcut for FDM support paint; reach it through the gizmo bar icon.

Second, N does nothing. I’ve seen it claimed as the Color Painting hotkey in old posts. It isn’t documented in the wiki and pressing it does nothing. Color Painting is a gizmo-bar icon for now.

Third, C behaves differently by context. In Prepare, it activates the cut gizmo. In Preview, it toggles the G-code window. Same key, two behaviors. While we’re here, the cut and boolean gizmos are the entry points for modifier meshes.

Color painting and the 1-9 filament keys

Here’s the shortcut most people get wrong, and I include myself. The keys 1–9 are not brush sizes. The wiki is unambiguous: in Prepare, 1-9 sets the filament for the selected object or part. In the Objects List, the same range sets the extruder number. Inside the Color Painting gizmo, those keys pick which filament index you’re painting with.

Brush size lives on the mouse wheel. Specifically:

Ctrl + Mouse wheel: Support/Color Painting: adjust pen radius
Alt + Mouse wheel: Support/Color Painting: adjust section position
Esc: Deselect All (works in the toolbar context too)
Shift + drag, Move: press to snap by 1 mm

If you’ve been wrestling with brush size by clicking the +/- icons, stop. Hold Ctrl, spin the wheel, done. The full color painting workflow changes once you internalize those two modifiers.

One subtle bit: inside the gizmo, 1-9 switches the active brush filament. Outside the gizmo with a part selected, the same keys assign that part to a filament. Same range, different effect depending on focus.

Preview tab: scrubbing layers and reading G-code

Once a plate has been sliced, the Preview tab is where you sanity-check layer transitions, look for retraction artifacts, and scrub through tricky overhangs to make sure the toolpath is going where you think it should.

OrcaSlicer Preview tab showing the vertical layer slider, the G-code panel opened with the C key, and toolpath visualization on the build plate — Preview tab vertical slider with G-code window toggle

The Preview shortcuts revolve around the two sliders (vertical for layer, horizontal for move-within-layer) and the G-code window.

Arrow Up: Vertical slider: Move active thumb Up
Arrow Down: Vertical slider: Move active thumb Down
Arrow Left: Horizontal slider: Move active thumb Left
Arrow Right: Horizontal slider: Move active thumb Right
L: On/Off one layer mode of vertical slider
C: On/Off G-code window
Tab: Switch between Prepare/Preview
Shift + Any arrow: Move slider 5x faster
Shift + Mouse wheel: Move slider 5x faster
Ctrl + Any arrow: Move slider 5x faster
Ctrl + Mouse wheel: Move slider 5x faster
Home: Horizontal slider: Move to start position
End: Horizontal slider: Move to last position

L for one-layer mode is the one I use constantly. It isolates the current layer so you see exactly which moves happen on that pass. Pair it with C to open the G-code panel and you’ve got a fast diagnostic loop without touching the mouse.

Objects List shortcuts

The Objects List panel on the right side has its own keyboard set, mostly overlapping with the global shortcuts but with one extra binding worth knowing.

1-9: Set extruder number for objects and parts
Del: Delete objects, parts, modifiers
Esc: Deselect all
Ctrl + C: Copy to clipboard
Ctrl + V: Paste from clipboard
Ctrl + X: Cut
Ctrl + A: Select all objects
Ctrl + K: Clone selected
Ctrl + Z: Undo
Ctrl + Y: Redo
Space: Select object/part and press to change name
Mouse click: Select object/part and click to change name

Ctrl + K for clone is the one that doesn’t appear elsewhere. For a plate of repeated parts, clone beats copy-paste because it keeps positioning relative and adds a numbered suffix. I use it for batches of identical brackets where I want six copies, then hit A to arrange.

Space for rename is the other underrated one. Click a part, hit Space, type, Enter. No right-click menu.

Windows vs macOS vs Linux

The platform story is shorter than you’d think. Linux behaves identically to Windows: everything that uses Ctrl on Windows uses Ctrl on Linux. macOS users substitute Cmd for Ctrl on every binding, with exactly two documented exceptions.

Delete: Windows and Linux use Del. macOS uses Fn + Backspace.
3Dconnexion device settings: Windows and Linux use Ctrl + M. macOS uses Ctrl + Shift + M.

That’s it. Beyond those two, every other shortcut follows the Cmd-for-Ctrl rule. If a tutorial lists a third macOS-only binding, treat it with suspicion. The wiki doesn’t document one, and OrcaSlicer doesn’t currently support user-defined remapping per closed Issue #1222.

Printable cheat sheet

Print this section, pin it next to your monitor, and you’ll have most of OrcaSlicer’s keyboard surface area in one glance.

Category	Shortcut	Action
Global	Ctrl + N / O / S / Shift+S	New / Open / Save / Save As
Global	Ctrl + I	Import STL/STEP/3MF/OBJ/AMF
Global	Ctrl + R	Slice plate
Global	Ctrl + G	Export sliced file
Global	Ctrl + Shift + G	Print plate
Global	Ctrl + Tab	Switch table page
Global	?	Show in-app shortcuts list
Prepare	A / Shift + A	Arrange all / on selected plates
Prepare	Q / Shift + Q	Auto-orient selected / all
Prepare	Arrows	Move 10 mm (Shift = 1 mm)
Prepare	Ctrl + 0..6	Camera presets
Prepare	Ctrl + D	Delete all
Gizmo	M / R / S / F	Move / Rotate / Scale / Face on bed
Gizmo	C / B	Cut / Mesh boolean
Gizmo	H / P	Fuzzy skin / Seam paint
Gizmo	L	SLA support points
Gizmo	T / U / Y / E	Text / Measure / Assemble / Brim ears
Painting	1-9	Filament / extruder index
Painting	Ctrl + Mouse wheel	Brush radius
Painting	Alt + Mouse wheel	Section position
Preview	L	One-layer mode
Preview	C	G-code window
Preview	Tab	Swap Prepare/Preview
Objects List	Ctrl + K	Clone selected
Objects List	Space	Rename selected
macOS only	Fn + Backspace	Delete selected
macOS only	Ctrl + Shift + M	3Dconnexion settings

FAQ

Can I remap OrcaSlicer’s keyboard shortcuts?

Not in the current release. Issue #1222 requested a built-in remapping UI and was closed without being implemented. There’s also open Issue #7691 tracking accessibility-driven requests for things like Ctrl + Shift + 1-9 for plate switching, but until that lands you’re working with the defaults.

Why doesn’t N do anything? I read somewhere it was Color Painting.

The wiki does not list N as a binding. Older forum posts and a few outdated tutorials claim it triggered the Color Painting gizmo, but pressing it in a current build does nothing. Use the gizmo bar icon to enter Color Painting, then use 1-9 to pick filament and Ctrl + Mouse wheel to size the brush.

Is there a keyboard shortcut for the AMS panel or the Device tab?

No. The OrcaSlicer wiki does not document any dedicated AMS panel hotkey, and the Device tab does not have its own key bindings. Navigation there is mouse-driven.

What about a hotkey for the custom G-code editor?

There isn’t one in the official wiki. The C key in the Preview tab opens the G-code OUTPUT viewer, not the custom-G-code-insertion dialog. For the full workflow, see our guide on custom G-code in OrcaSlicer.

Does Ctrl + G slice the plate or export it?

It exports the sliced file. The shortcut to slice is Ctrl + R. The shortcut to send the print to the printer is Ctrl + Shift + G. The G keys cluster around “after slicing” actions, R triggers the slicing itself.

Why is L SLA support points and not FDM support painting?

That’s just how the wiki defines it. OrcaSlicer’s L binding is the SLA support points gizmo. The FDM support paint brush is reached through the gizmo bar icon and currently has no documented single-key shortcut. If you primarily print FDM, you’ll use the icon for that one.

What changed in OrcaSlicer 2.3.x for shortcuts?

One documented change. The 2.3.1 release notes mention that the in-app Help → Keyboard Shortcuts popup now reflects swapped mouse buttons if you’ve remapped LMB and RMB in your preferences. No new shortcuts were added or removed in 2.3.x per the release notes.

The takeaway

OrcaSlicer’s keyboard map isn’t huge, maybe seventy bindings if you count every variant. That’s small enough to memorize the ones you’ll use ten times a day: the gizmo letters, Ctrl + R to slice, Tab to flip tabs, and arrow nudges with Shift for 1 mm. For everything else, hit ?. When you’re ready to go deeper, the OrcaSlicer settings master guide covers the configuration surface beyond the keyboard.

OrcaSlicer Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet (Every Verified Key)