I Built a Full PrusaSlicer Keyboard Shortcuts Guide (And Here’s Why You’ll Want It To Use It)

You can jump straight to it here: PrusaSlicer Shortcuts Guide. Stick around for a minute first, though, because I want to explain what it is, why I made it, and how to actually get some use out of it.

When I first started slicing models, I did everything with the mouse. Click a menu, scroll, find the button, click again. It works, but it’s slow, and slow adds up. If you slice a dozen prints a week, all those little clicks turn into real time.

Keyboard shortcuts fix that. Instead of digging through menus to slice a model, you press one or two keys and it just happens. Once your fingers learn them, you stop thinking about the software and start thinking about the print. That’s really what you want. The tool should stay out of your way.

The catch is that PrusaSlicer has a lot of shortcuts. The built-in list (you can open it any time by pressing the ? key) is helpful but bare-bones. It gives you the key and a short label, and that’s about it. If you’re new, some of those labels don’t mean much. “Arrange” or “Gizmo Scale” won’t tell a beginner what’s really going on, so I wanted to fill in the gaps.

• Commands are the big-picture actions like starting a new project, opening files, saving, slicing, and exporting your G-code.
• Plater covers everything you do while arranging models on the build plate: moving, rotating, scaling, copying, and switching between the editing tools.
• Gizmos are the extra keys you can hold while using a tool to snap to exact amounts or change how the tool behaves.
• Objects handles marking a model as printable or telling a multi-material printer which extruder should print it.
• Preview holds the shortcuts you use after slicing, when you’re stepping through the print layer by layer to check your work.
• Vertical and horizontal sliders are the fine controls for those layer and move sliders in the preview, including how to add color-change markers.

The interactive guide covers the shortcuts from the open-source version of PrusaSlicer. I organized them the same way the program does, grouped by where they are and what you’re doing:

For every single shortcut, I wrote a plain-English explanation of what it does. Not just the label “Zoom to Bed,” but what that means and when you’d reach for it. I kept the writing at a level anyone can follow, because a reference guide only helps if you can understand it without already being an expert.

If you only walk away with a handful, make it these. They’re the ones I use constantly:

• Slice your model: press ⌘R the slice shortcut instead of clicking the button. It’s the single biggest time-saver in the whole program.
• Arrange (A): drop a few models on the plate and press A. PrusaSlicer spaces them out automatically so nothing overlaps. It saves a ton of fiddling.
• Place face on bed (F): click a flat surface on your model and it rotates so that face sits flat on the plate. Great for orienting a print without fighting the rotate tool.
• Zoom to Bed (B): lost your view or zoomed off into space? Press B and the whole plate snaps back onto the screen.
• Undo and Redo: step backward and forward through your changes. Knowing you can undo makes you a lot braver about experimenting.

Once those become second nature, the rest of the page is there when you’re ready for more.

The guide shows the Mac symbols, so you’ll see the Command key (⌘) and the Option key (⌥) in the shortcuts. If you’re on Windows or Linux, the layout is almost identical. You just swap a couple of keys. Where you see ⌘, use Ctrl. Where you see ⌥, use Alt. Everything else works the same. So even if you’re not on a Mac, the guide still has you covered. Just keep that swap in the back of your mind.

That’s how I picked them up, a few at a time, in the middle of real projects. This page is just the cheat sheet I wish I’d had when I started.

I’m not done with this page. In the updates ahead, I’m going to start linking my own how-to articles and videos right alongside the shortcuts they relate to. So when there’s a walkthrough for a particular tool or feature, you’ll be able to click straight from the shortcut to a full explanation of how I use it. Not every shortcut will have one right away, but I’ll keep adding them as I write and record new stuff. It’s worth checking back every so often to see what’s new.

Head over to the PrusaSlicer Shortcuts Guide and bookmark it. Open it up the next time you sit down to slice something and try working in a couple of shortcuts. I think you’ll be surprised how quickly it changes the way you work.

If there’s a shortcut you lean on that I should highlight, or something on the page you’d like explained differently, drop a comment and let me know. I built this to be useful, and the people actually using it always have the best ideas.

Slicer Smarter

Dabble Dad