Cursor Keyboard Shortcuts: The Cheat Sheet

A handful of bindings cover most of the day, and the table below has them. These are the current documented defaults (macOS keys; Windows/Linux generally swap Cmd for Ctrl); your exact keys live in Cursor's Keyboard Shortcuts settings.

Of the ten, four carry a normal day: Tab, ⌘+K, ⌘+I or ⌘+L, and @ inside the prompt. Learn those on the first morning and leave the rest where they are. The other six answer questions you have not had yet, which is an argument for meeting them later rather than for skipping the table.

Two of the six are worth knowing about before you need them, because nobody stumbles into either one. Cmd+. opens the mode menu and Cmd+/ loops between models, and both change what the next request does more than any amount of prompt rewording will. People who never find them run one model in one mode for months, which is, I think, the most ordinary way a Cursor install stays half-used.

Treat the table as documented defaults and the Keyboard Shortcuts screen as the authority. Cursor ships quickly, and internal command IDs and context keys can change between releases, so any cheat sheet, this one included, is a snapshot of one version. Search that screen by action rather than by key when something here does not match your build.

Mostly, by swapping Cmd for Ctrl. Tab stays Tab, Ctrl+K makes an inline edit, Ctrl+I or Ctrl+L opens the AI side panel, Ctrl+. opens the mode menu, and ⇧+⇥ rotates modes on every platform. The table above prints the macOS keys.

The swap holds right up until a two-step chord, and there it is not a swap at all. Cursor moved the chord leader off ⌘/Ctrl+K, since ⌘+K now drives inline edit, and the staff answer on the forum gives the replacement as ⌘+R on Mac and Ctrl+M on Windows and Linux. Cursor's own help page muddies that: its Windows and Linux route to the shortcuts screen starts with Ctrl+R, not Ctrl+M. Test both once on the machine in front of you and keep whichever your build answers to.

That is probably the only line worth writing down for a mixed fleet. Everything else survives the platform change, so one shared cheat sheet works as long as it carries both leaders instead of one.

Everything is remappable. Cursor's docs state that all keybindings, including Cursor-specific features, can be changed in Keyboard Shortcuts settings. Two things trip up VS Code arrivals: Cursor moved the two-step chord leader from ⌘/Ctrl+K to ⌘+R (Mac) / Ctrl+M (Windows/Linux) because ⌘+K now drives inline edit, and imported bindings sometimes carry broken when conditions that silently never fire.

Whether to remap anything at all depends on who else reads your keystrokes. My first answer used to be to rebind whatever felt wrong in the first week. I would narrow that now: remap the keys that collide with something you press all day, and sit out the ones that are merely unfamiliar, because each remap is a private dialect that the docs and whoever pairs with you both describe some other way.

When a binding does nothing at all, the answer is usually that another command won the key rather than that the binding itself is wrong. Cursor has a shortcut troubleshooting log for exactly that: it prints every rule a keystroke matched and which binding took it.

For the full customization reference (keybindings.json, when-clause syntax, discovering context keys and copy-paste recipes), see Cursor keybindings.json: when clauses, chords and recipes.

Pick the surface by how much the AI is allowed to touch. The list below maps each surface to the work it's right for.

• Reading or planning, no changes → chat / Ask (Ctrl/⌘+L).
• One precise change to code you're looking at → inline edit (Ctrl/⌘+K).
• A change across files or that runs commands → agent (Ctrl/⌘+I).

The list sorts by blast radiusHow much breaks if a change goes wrong; the scope of potential damage. Press Enter for the full definition., which is the right first cut. What it leaves out is that your written conventions do not reach all three surfaces equally. Cursor's rules documentation says rules do not affect Cursor TabCursor's original autocomplete: multi-line, edit-aware suggestions you accept with the Tab key. Press Enter for the full definition., and User Rules apply to Agent chat rather than to inline edit on ⌘+K. Test a convention you depend on in the agent panel, since that is the surface reading the most of them.

Two more bindings belong in this decision, though neither is really about editing. ⇧+⌘+S opens a side chat, which since Cursor 3Cursor's agent-forward interface (also called the agent window or Glass), built to run and supervise many agents at once rather than edit one file. Press Enter for the full definition..11 lets a question run alongside an agent that is already working instead of interrupting it. ⌘+⇧+D toggles Design ModeA way to point at an element in Cursor's built-in browser and change it directly, instead of describing it in words. Press Enter for the full definition., and that one only does anything in the Agents WindowCursor's surface listing your agent runs; open a run to read its diff and search transcripts from the command palette. Press Enter for the full definition. with your app open in the browser, so pressing it in the IDE looks like a broken shortcut.

⌘+E toggles the agent-focused layout, which I would try once before concluding the side panel is too narrow to work in.

For the full mental model of when to reach for each, see the Ask vs Agent vs ComposerCursor's own fast coding model, tuned for the editor and priced well below frontier models; the recommended day-to-day model for executing a plan. Press Enter for the full definition. guide.

Yes. In the Cursor CLICursor's command line: the full agent, all modes and models, in the terminal and pipeable into scripts and CI. Press Enter for the full definition. terminal, ⇧+⇥ cycles through the run modes so you don't have to leave the keyboard: auto-run-all-commands, plan mode, ask mode, debug mode, and plain agent mode. The terminal also exposes slash commandsSaved multi-step prompts you trigger from the / menu, such as run tests, fix CI or open a pull request. Press Enter for the full definition. to create rules, skills, and sub-agents on the spot (plus others like /MCP login).

None of that is CLI-only, and the overlap is the useful bit here. ⇧+⇥ rotates modes from the chat input in the editor too, and Cmd+. opens the picker when you would rather read the list than cycle through it. So the week you spend in the terminal carries over the moment you open the IDE.