Changing a key
Most of the cull page's keys are yours to change. The Keyboard sheet lists every action you can rebind and the key it answers to, and any row can be given a new key; the few keys that are fixed are listed under What you cannot change. Reading the keys is the panel on Reading your keys; changing one is this sheet.
Opening the sheet
- Choose Vixlo ▸ Keyboard… from the menu bar. It works with a library open and from the launch screen, with no library open at all.
- Or open Your keys on the cull page and click Change them: Vixlo ▸ Keyboard… at its foot.
The sheet is titled Keyboard. Under the title: Click a row, then press the key you want. Two actions can never share a stroke: the row asks whether to swap them, take it, or keep the one you have. These keys are yours, not the library's — they are stored once for you, and every library you open uses them.
Below the three preset cards, the actions are listed in six groups — Deciding, Moving around, Proposals, Undo and search, Rating, In Compare (Keep the other one and Hold both; see Keys in Compare) — each row with its key at the right. Two rows carry a second line: Reject says to the bin — the pass bar’s Rejects state, and Additional Take says a second frame from an open stack, without losing the first. At the end of the list, Mouse and trackpad repeats the three gestures. Below the list is the path of the file your keys live in, and under that the sheet's two buttons, Reset to defaults and Done.
Recording a new key
- Click anywhere on the row. Its key is replaced by Press the new key… and the row is lit.
- Press the key you want: a letter, a digit or a punctuation key,
Space,↩,←or→, on its own or with⌘,⇧,⌥or⌃. - A line in orange just above the list says what happened — Take is J now — and the row shows the new key.
To leave the row as it was, press Esc or click the row a second time. While a row is recording, every key goes to the recorder and nothing reaches the app behind the sheet. Esc is never recorded; it cancels.
A key takes effect the moment it is set; there is nothing to save. The menu bar and the decision buttons on the pass line show the new key; the Your keys panel is closed while the sheet is up, and it and the held map show the new key the next time you open the panel or hold ?.
When the key is already taken
Two actions can never share a key. Press one that another action holds and, instead of a refusal, a card appears above the list with a question. Record C on Hold, say, and it reads C is Compare's key, with No stroke is ever silently taken away. under it, and three answers:
- Swap them — the two actions trade. This row takes the key you pressed and the other action takes this row's old key, so both keep a key.
- Take it · Compare goes unbound — this row takes the key and the other action is left with none. Its row then reads unbound, and it cannot be reached from the keyboard until you give it a key.
- Keep mine — nothing changes.
After a swap or a take, the confirmation line names both: Hold is C now · Compare is H.
What you cannot change
Two keys have no row in the sheet and always keep their meaning, because losing either would leave you stuck:
Esc, which closes the nearest open thing. The sheet never records it; pressed on a row, it cancels.?, which opens the keys panel and holds the map. The sheet will record?if you press it on a row, but that action then never happens, because?always opens your keys first — so leave?to itself.
Shortcuts that belong to the menu bar rather than to your map are not in the sheet either: ⌘1, ⌘2, ⌘7, ⌘O, ⌘E, ⇧⌘E, ⇧⌘P, ⇧⌘W, ⇧⌘C, ⇧⌘V. Nor are the edit page's own keys (see Keys on the edit page), the played gallery's keys (see Keys in full screen and the gallery), or ⌘1 to ⌘9 on the note card. The sheet lists what it can change and nothing else.
Closing the sheet
Done closes it, and so does Esc when no row is recording. Reset to defaults puts the Vixlo keyboard back, replacing every key you changed; the line above the list says The Vixlo keyboard: T take · R reject · H hold · Space full screen.
Where your keys are kept
Your keys are stored once, for you, in one file:
~/Library/Application Support/Vixlo/Keyboard/keymap.json
The path is printed below the list on the sheet. The file is not part of any library: every library you open uses the same keys, and a second Mac with a copy of this file in the same place uses them too. The file is written each time you click a preset card, record a key or choose Reset to defaults, even when the keys come out as they were. Until the first of those there is no file, and the Vixlo keyboard is in use.
If the app could not read the file at launch, the sheet says so — The keymap file could not be read. The Vixlo defaults are in use; changing a key here writes a fresh one. If the file gave one key to two actions, the first keeps it and a line on the sheet names the one put back to its default.
One row in Moving around, Show or hide the filmstrip on F, is left over from an earlier build. The strip under the photograph is always shown in 0.1, and pressing F changes nothing on screen. You can give the key to something else.