Storyflow is built to be driven from the keyboard. Once the single-key tool shortcuts are in your fingers, building a board stops being a trip to the toolbar for every card and becomes something closer to typing.

Where to find them in the app

Open Account Settings, then the Shortcuts tab. It lists every shortcut on this page, grouped the same way, with a search box at the top so you can look one up by name, description or key.

Six shortcuts have a toggle next to them. Those are the ones that can collide with ordinary typing, so you can switch any of them off and keep the rest.

The six you can turn on and off

• Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + D: Switch between light and dark mode
• Cmd/Ctrl + A: Select all items on the board
• Cmd/Ctrl + Z: Undo
• Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Z: Redo
• Cmd/Ctrl + C: Copy the selection
• Cmd/Ctrl + V: Paste

Create tools

Move the cursor to the spot on the canvas where you want the item, then press the key. The new element lands at the cursor, not in the middle of the screen, so you place things by pointing rather than by dragging afterwards.

• N: Note
• H: Heading
• T: To-do
• E: Ticket
• D: Document
• W: Wall
• K: Kanban board
• R: Table
• I: Link
• V: Video
• U: Audio
• P: Color swatch
• G: AI image
• B: Tactic
• L: Line
• C: Comment
• F: Nested whiteboard (shown as a folder)

Most of the letters are the first letter of the tool. The ones that are not: G for generate (AI image), U for aUdio, E for tickEt, P for palette, I for link, and R for table.

Building walls in a row

These two work on a selected wall and are the fastest way to lay out a board that is a sequence of stages, days or scenes.

• Shift + Enter: New wall to the right of the selected wall, top-aligned
• Cmd/Ctrl + Enter: New wall to the right, with an arrow drawn from the current wall to it

Drawing

• J: Toggle freehand drawing mode on and off
• Escape: Leave drawing mode and discard the stroke in progress

Drag and navigate

• Space (hold): Pan the board while staying in cursor mode
• Shift (while dragging): Lock movement to horizontal or vertical
• Cmd/Ctrl (while dragging): Snap to the board's grid size
• Alt (while dragging): Drag out a duplicate and leave the original in place
• Alt (in hand mode): Temporarily switch back to the cursor

View

• Cmd/Ctrl + +: Zoom in
• Cmd/Ctrl + -: Zoom out
• Cmd/Ctrl + 0: Fit everything on the board into view
• Scroll or pinch: Zoom at the cursor

Selection

• Cmd/Ctrl + O: Open the selected item's detail view (with one item selected)
• Cmd/Ctrl + D: Duplicate the selection
• Backspace / Delete: Delete the selection
• Shift/Cmd/Ctrl + Click: Add an item to the selection

Layout

Select two or more items first, then reflow them.

• Cmd/Ctrl + G: Arrange as a grid
• Cmd/Ctrl + Y: Arrange in a horizontal row
• Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + V: Stack vertically
• Cmd/Ctrl + M: Arrange as masonry
• Cmd/Ctrl + O: Arrange in an orbit
• Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + U: Normalize size across compatible items

Cmd/Ctrl + O does two different things depending on what is selected. One item: it opens that item. Two or more: it arranges them in an orbit.

Align

Also needs two or more items selected.

• Alt + L: Align left
• Alt + C: Align centre (horizontal)
• Alt + R: Align right
• Alt + T: Align top
• Alt + V: Align middle (vertical)
• Alt + B: Align bottom
• Alt + Shift + H: Distribute horizontally
• Alt + Shift + V: Distribute vertically

Connect

• Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + L: Connect the selection in its visual order
• Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + H: Connect the selection to a central hub item
• Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + E: Connect the selection in a closed loop

Tips and tricks

Just start typing. Select a note, to-do or heading and type. You do not need to double-click or press Enter first: the first key you hit opens the card for editing and becomes the first character.

Select all is context aware. Cmd/Ctrl + A does not always grab the whole board. With a text card selected it selects the text inside it, with a wall selected it selects everything in that wall, and with nothing selected it takes the board. So you can press it to scope your selection to the wall you are working in instead of pulling in everything.

Alt-drag is one undo. Duplicating by dragging with Alt is recorded as a single create, so one Cmd/Ctrl + Z takes the copy away cleanly.

Chain walls with Shift + Enter. Select a wall, hold Shift and tap Enter a few times, and you have a row of evenly spaced, top-aligned walls ready to fill. Use Cmd/Ctrl + Enter instead when the walls form a sequence and you want the arrows drawn as you go.

Commenting works on shared boards. C is the one create shortcut that still works when you have been given comment access rather than edit access, which matches the reduced toolbar visitors see.

Good to know

Shortcuts pause while you are typing. Any time the cursor is in a note, document, table cell or input, single-key shortcuts stop creating elements so you can type the letters normally.

On a view-only board the creation shortcuts are switched off, apart from C when the board's owner has enabled commenting.

Two working shortcuts are not in the Settings list yet: R for a table and J for drawing mode. They both work on the canvas today.