What Is Shortkeys and What Does It Do?

Updated

Shortkeys is a free, open-source browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets you assign custom keyboard shortcuts to browser actions. Instead of being limited to the handful of shortcuts your browser ships with, you pick an action — or write your own JavaScript — and bind it to any key combination you like. It's aimed at anyone who wants to navigate tabs, scroll, control video, or trigger scripts without reaching for the mouse.

What you can actually do with it

The extension exposes over 100 built-in actions organized by category, plus a custom JavaScript option for anything not covered. The main categories:

Category Examples of actions
Scrolling Scroll to top/bottom, page up/down, scroll left/right
Navigation Go back/forward, reload, hard reload (bypass cache), copy URL, copy page title, open URL from clipboard, search Google/YouTube/Wikipedia/GitHub
Tabs New tab, new tab to right, close tab, close other/left/right tabs, close duplicates
Media & page Mute audio, video controls, zoom, bookmarks, downloads

Beyond single actions, Shortkeys supports:

  • Custom JavaScript — run any script from a shortcut, edited in a CodeMirror editor with syntax highlighting.
  • Macros — chain multiple actions into one shortcut, with optional delays between steps.
  • Multi-key sequences — bind things like Vim's g g, not just single combos.
  • Groups — organize shortcuts into collapsible groups you can enable, disable, or share as a unit.
  • Command palette — click the extension icon for a searchable list of your active shortcuts.

Shortcut packs

Rather than building everything from scratch, you can install curated collections with one click. The site names Vim, YouTube, and GitHub as examples. This is the fastest path if you already know a keybinding scheme (Vim especially) and want it to work in the browser.

How setup works

  1. Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox add-ons.
  2. Configure — pick a built-in action or write custom JS, then click Record and press your key combination.
  3. Execute — press the keys and the action fires.

Settings live at the extension's options page (chrome-extension://shortkeys/options.html in Chrome). The settings page follows your system dark/light theme automatically, and shortcuts sync across Chrome instances through your Google account.

Who it's for

Shortkeys makes sense if you:

  • Want browser-level shortcuts the browser doesn't offer natively (close duplicate tabs, copy a page as a Markdown link, scroll to bottom).
  • Use Vim or another editor's keybindings and want consistency while browsing.
  • Need to trigger a repetitive JavaScript snippet on demand.

It's less useful if you only want a couple of shortcuts and don't want to configure anything — the value comes from the breadth of actions and the ability to customize.

The essentials

  • Platforms: Chrome and Firefox.
  • Price: Free and open source (the site states "free & open source, forever").
  • Scale: The site reports 200,000+ Chrome users.
  • Source and docs: Available on GitHub, with documentation linked from the site.