I want deep use drafts, so i need familiar with keyboard shortcuts
There are lots of apps that will do āShow Me The Keyboard Shortcuts For This Appā but the best one is KeyCue.
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Several useful tools for Mac have been suggested, but just to be sure all are aware of the built-in iOS feature to hold down the command key to get a cheatsheet of all keyboard shortcuts currently available in any app.
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How the ābuilt-in iOS feature to hold down the command keyā
do you mean iPadOS with external keyboard?
I think we should simply create one.
Most importantly because the user defined action short cuts are not the same for everyone
The idea would be to create a draft with multi markdown and allow the user to print it.
Most importantly - give a option to add and remove short cuts to fit it to everybodyās needs.
Maybe we could even share them via action on the action directory.
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Hereās an idea: If actions were iterable and had a getShortcutKey() method someone could write an action to pick up all the actionsā shortcut keys and report on them.
I need to have a chat with @agiletortoise about beefing up the action javascript model some time.
I think that would be possible now. Just a little fiddly.
You can find all actions. You can then get the share URL for an action via scripting (just not an action group right now).
If you decode the install URL, you can pull the keyboard shortcut out. I do something along these lines in generating this documentation from manually copiedaction group installation URL(s).
If people felt this would be useful Iām sure that I could whip something up, but it wouldnāt pick up non-action keyboard shortcuts.
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That gets us 99% of the way there - so itās very good.
Wouldnāt the non-Action shortcut key combos be pretty standard? So hard codeable?
And, how are you getting the shortcut key from the URL?
I think it would fetch them from the keyboard shortcut that is defined in the action directory
@sylumer am I right?
I donāt know. On the Mac I do define my own through the standard OS feature that lets you do so.
I guess your mileage may vary.
By decoding it and parsing the JSON. As I say, thatās exactly how I generate the documentation I linked to above, which includes the shortcut key.
The TADpoLe library has a function for extracting the shortcut keys once you have the JSON for an action: TA_actionKeys().
The installation URL is not the same as the action directory installation URL. Because the actionās keyboard shortcut is associated with the action, it also is part of the installation URL, and the information held by the action directory. So is it the same? Absolutely. Is that where Iām getting it from? No.
Iāve created a quick action that as requested will just dump out the names of the actions with keyboard shortcuts and their shortcut to a new draft when run.
Please make that sure you have installed and set-up the ThoughtAsylum Action Group before trying to run it.
Hope that helps.
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Iām going to roll in as the Luddite in the room.
I actually made my own keyboard shortcut cheat sheets a good while back.
I took screen grabs of the HUDs that appear when long-pressing ā and then sent them to Text Grabber to extract the text. Unfortunately, Text Grabber didnāt recognise the keyboard shortcuts assigned, just the Action names, so I had to manually add in those bits. I also tried the āEdit Group,ā route for screen grabbing and that also didnāt pick up the keys assigned.
I then made a Markdown draft with all the keyboard shortcuts filled in and assigned a keyboard shortcut to load that draft when I need to refer to it. I also printed it off as an aide-mĆ©moire on A4, and a condensed version on PostIt notes. Iām not really a fan of scrolling through the HUD.
Iāll roll out again now and leave you scripting geniuses to it. 
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Of the many things I have to thank you for (that Iāve been experimenting with lately,) this is the most significant, but for reasons not entirely related to just Drafts. Without being too wordy:
Iāve been using a bluetooth keyboard with my iPhone since it was introduced with iPhone 4. (It began as a conscious experiment - I chose a new phone instead of a new laptop to take to my first year of college.)
I have accumulated a lot of evidence to suggest that number of iPhone users whoāve used a hardware keyboard with their phone is extremely tiny, but I think itās a dynamic thatās still worth documenting properly. As youāve probably observed, even the association of iPad and keyboard in the past few years has actually made it worse - lookup any given iOS appās keyboard shortcuts and youāll return a list for iPad and nothing else. Over the years, Iāve maintained a habit of going down the iPad list, testing each shortcut on iPhone, noting down the results in a table, and then emailing said list to the developers. (Naturally, they almost never respond. Shout out to Tapbots for being the only recent exception.)
Basically, I have come to the conclusion that the responsibility of writing the definitive iPhone x Bluetooth Keyboard guide/reference/documentation is my own.
Iām posting this response here because I want to invte past, present, and future users to please share any thoughts they have on this if they so desire, but Iād very much like to consult you privately if you can spare the time and energy.
Thanks!
Are there a lot of apps where the keyboard shortcuts on iPad differ from the ones on iPhone? They should function the same on either device in Drafts, and from a developer perspective I would think it would be harder to make them not work on iPhone than to just let them be the same.
IPhone does not have the benefit of the iPad overlay to help discovery. In Drafts you can at least enable shortcuts for actions to display in the list (in ā¦ action list options).
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from a developer perspective I would think it would be harder to make them not work on iPhone than to just let them be the same.
Thank you for confirming that! Iāve always suspected, but I am ultimately not a developer.
the answer to your question, in my experience, is yesā¦
I would go so far as to say the majority of the cross-platform apps which have bluetooth keyboard support have incongruities between the devices.
Depending on how much you know about Tweetbot 6, you might find it interesting to know that its two remaining essential shortcuts (F to favorite a Tweet and ā + R to reply) are no longer supported, though there was a point where I had both Tweetbot 5 and Tweetbot 6 on my phone when those shortcuts were still working on the former. As I said, they did actually respond to me about this! First with doubt:
Which ones do you think you are missing, donāt think that shouldāve changed.
Then - in the interest of thoroughness - I did one more systematic run through of Tweetbotās iPad shortcuts list just to make sure, sent the results to them, and heard back a week later: āthanks! weāll take a look at these.ā
I consider myself pretty competent at finding documentation on any given obscure, dated issue, but never with proprietary Apple stuff before lol.
I would kill for an actual look at the code involved - Iāve been seriously considering buying a used Mac Mini just so I could poke around Xcode myself.
iOS keyboard shortcuts are implemented with UIKeyCommand. If you Google that, there are many article about how they are implemented. This is a good one.
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Be aware of the resources you need to run Xcode and Swift my used mac approach was not usable for a development usage. Just saying - check the specs. Maybe a macos developer might give you a hint what is needed.
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To throw in with the interested parties, Iām now an iPhone-only user who writes long articles and books with the Apple BT KB. Switching back and forth among iA Writer, Ulysses, and Drafts, Iāve just returned to Drafts because Iāve realized the best approach to choosing apps is parity for the iPhone.
The worst difference of all between iOS and iPadOS is CMD-tab does not work on the phone. The ability to search references from the keyboard bar limits that frustration.
(Now if only I could remember how to do everything in Drafts. Wonder if a Take Control manual would sell. I should write one.)
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