Keyboard shortcuts
HushChat on the web can be driven from the keyboard. Five shortcuts cover the things you do over and over: search, start a conversation, check your mentions, back out of whatever is open, and look the list up again when you forget it.
Keyboard shortcuts are a web feature. The iOS and Android apps have no keyboard shortcuts — use the on-screen controls described on the other pages instead.
The full list
The app groups the shortcuts into three headings — NAVIGATION, CONVERSATION and GENERAL — and that is the order they appear in.
| Category | Action | Windows and Linux | macOS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Navigation | Focus search | Ctrl + K | ⌘ K |
| Conversation | New conversation | Ctrl + N | ⌘ N |
| Conversation | Toggle mentioned messages | Ctrl + Shift + M | ⌘ ⇧ M |
| General | Close overlay | Esc | Esc |
| General | Show keyboard shortcuts | Ctrl + / | ⌘ / |
HushChat picks the right modifier for you: on a Mac the shortcuts use ⌘, and everywhere else they
use Ctrl. The same applies to Shift, which a Mac shows as ⇧.
What each one does
Focus search puts the cursor in the search box above the conversation list, ready for you to type. It works from anywhere in the app — if you are on another screen it takes you to your conversations first, and it switches the list back to the All filter, because that is the only filter that shows the search box. See Search.
New conversation opens the panel for starting a new conversation, the same one the New Group menu item opens.
Toggle mentioned messages opens the Mentioned Messages list, and pressing it again closes it. See Mentioned messages.
Close overlay backs you out of whatever is open, one layer at a time. If the mentioned messages
list is open it closes that; otherwise it closes the new conversation panel; otherwise it takes the
cursor back out of the search box. With nothing open, Esc does nothing.
Show keyboard shortcuts opens a dialog titled Keyboard Shortcuts listing everything in the table above, with the key caps drawn for the keyboard you are actually on. Select Close to dismiss it.
Typing and shortcuts
Every shortcut except Esc uses Ctrl or ⌘, so it does not collide with ordinary typing — you can
press Ctrl / ⌘ + K while the cursor is in the message composer and it will still jump to search.
Esc also works while you are typing, which is what makes it a reliable way out of a panel you opened
by accident.
Learn Ctrl / ⌘ + / first. It is the shortcut that shows you the other four, so it is the only
one you have to remember.
When a shortcut does nothing
A few situations to check before assuming something is broken:
- You are on iOS or Android. There are no shortcuts there.
- The browser took the key first. Browsers claim some combinations for themselves, and a combination the browser handles never reaches HushChat.
- You pressed
Escwith nothing open. It only closes something that is actually open. - You are not signed in. Shortcuts act on your conversations, so they do nothing on the sign-in screens.
Shortcuts inside the composer
Two more keys matter while you are writing a message, and they work on every platform with a physical keyboard:
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
Enter | Sends the message |
Shift + Enter | Starts a new line instead of sending |
See Send a message for the rest of what the composer can do.