Barside keyboard shortcuts: hotkeys, note formatting and search bar keys

Barside keyboard shortcuts come in two kinds. Hotkeys work from any app on your computer, even while Barside waits in the tray, and you can change every one of them. App shortcuts work inside Barside: in a note, in the search bar and in tools such as clipboard history. This page lists both, as of October 2026 (Barside 1.49), and every key on it comes from Barside itself.

Barside is a free desktop app for Windows and Linux. The Mac keys on this page apply to Barside for Mac. Windows and Linux use the same keys; the Windows key is called Super on Linux.

Hotkeys that work in any app

These five hotkeys are set when you install Barside. They work wherever you are typing, and you can change or remove each one.

The other 46 commands start without a hotkey, and any of them can have one: New note, New task, New recording, New meeting, Passwords, a mode, and more. Read how the search bar and hotkeys for any app work together.

Barside keyboard shortcuts inside the app

Settings → Home lists a few of these under A few handy things, with the hotkeys you set.

Formatting shortcuts in notes

The note editor takes the keys you know from word processors. Point at Bold, Italic, Underline, Undo or Redo in the note toolbar to see its key.

Tab in the last cell of a table adds a row. Text color, highlight color, text links and fonts are on the toolbar's buttons.

Markdown typing shortcuts

You can also format by typing, the way Markdown does. Barside changes the characters into formatting as soon as you finish typing them. Press Backspace right after a change to get your characters back.

Inside a line, **text** or __text__ turns bold, *text* or _text_ turns italic, ~~text~~ is struck through, and a backtick on each side of a word makes it inline code.

The / menu and [[ links

Type / at the start of a line or after a space, and a list of blocks opens. Keep typing to narrow it: /h2, /checklist, /board, /table, /database, /chart, /embed, /html, /quote, /code, /divider, /drawing, /file or /link. Press ↑ and ↓ to choose, Enter or Tab to add the block, and Esc to close the menu. The menu does not open inside a code block.

Type [[ and a few letters of a note's title to link it. Choose with the arrow keys and press Enter or Tab. If no note has that title yet, Create note makes it and links it in one step. More in linked notes and backlinks.

Search bar keys and aliases

An alias is a short word you type in the search bar, then press Enter. Four commands also take words after their alias: nn Trip ideas makes a note with that title, task buy milk adds a task, save followed by a link saves it to Reading, and ai followed by a question asks Quick AI.

Keys in Barside's tools

• Clipboard history (Alt+Shift+V): ↑ and ↓ choose, Enter pastes into the app you were using, Shift+Enter copies without pasting, Ctrl+P pins, Shift+Delete deletes (Cmd+Backspace on Mac), and Esc closes. More in clipboard history.
• Capture screen text (Alt+Shift+S): drag across the text, or press Enter to capture the whole screen. The arrow keys move a selection (hold Shift for bigger steps), Ctrl with the arrows resizes it (Option on Mac), and Esc cancels. See copy text from the screen.
• Record part of the screen: the same keys choose the part, and Enter keeps it.
• Kanban boards: the arrow keys move between cards, Alt with an arrow moves the card, F2 edits it, Delete removes it, and Enter in a new card adds it and keeps the box open.
• Database tables: the arrow keys and Tab move between cells, Enter or F2 edits a cell, typing starts editing a text or number cell, Space ticks a checkbox, and Delete clears a cell.
• Meetings: Alt+A mutes, Alt+V turns the camera on or off, Alt+S shares your screen, Alt+H opens chat, Alt+U people, Alt+Y raises your hand, Alt+C captions, Alt+R records and Alt+F goes full screen. Hold Space to talk while muted. In Barside for Mac, these use Option. See video meetings.
• The assistant: Enter sends, Shift+Enter adds a line, and Ctrl+Shift+M (Shift+Cmd+M on Mac) starts listening for a spoken command once speech is installed. Press it again, or Enter, to use the command; Esc cancels, and Esc also stops a running command. See Hey Barside voice commands.

Set your own hotkeys and aliases

1. Open Settings → Hotkeys and aliases and click Change, type keys in the search bar, or click the keyboard button on the desktop bar. Point at that button to see your hotkeys without opening anything.
2. Find the command with Find a command, hotkey or alias….
3. Click its hotkey and press the new keys. Esc cancels. Barside pauses its own hotkeys while you press, so none of them fire.
4. To add an alias, type it in Add alias and press Enter. A command can have up to 8 aliases.
5. Remove a hotkey or alias with its X. The round arrow puts one hotkey back to its default, and Reset all returns everything after you confirm.

Barside checks each hotkey so it cannot break another app. It needs Ctrl, Alt or the Windows key with the key (an F key can be used alone), refuses Ctrl with one key so copy and paste keep working, refuses keys your system keeps (such as Alt+Tab or Win+L), and gives each hotkey to one command only. If another app holds a hotkey, Barside says it "is used by another app, so it does not work now". An alias is 1 to 24 letters, digits or dashes.

Windows, Linux and Mac

On Windows and Linux every key on this page is the same. On a Linux desktop with Wayland, hotkeys that work from any app work while an X11 app is active. Hotkeys and aliases says so and gives each command a copy button for a command such as barside --run quick, which you can add in your desktop's keyboard settings.

In Barside for Mac, app shortcuts use Cmd where Windows and Linux use Ctrl, hotkeys from any app use Control and Option as shown above, Cmd+Q quits Barside and Cmd+W closes a window like its X. Control or Command with one key is refused as a hotkey.

More shortcut sheets

Moving from another app? These sheets list its keys next to Barside's: Notion keyboard shortcuts, Obsidian keyboard shortcuts, Evernote keyboard shortcuts, OneNote keyboard shortcuts, Slack keyboard shortcuts, Zoom keyboard shortcuts, Loom keyboard shortcuts and 1Password keyboard shortcuts.