The 7 most useful keyboard shortcuts for the Arduino IDE

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In this video, you will learn the seven most useful Arduino IDE shortcuts that are going to save you time. Plus, I’m gonna give you a pneumonic to remember these shortcuts until you have them memorized. By the end of this video, you’ll have the knowhow to become an Arduino IDE shortcut ninja that could be featured in some cool hacking movie. All right, let’s go. All right. Okay. Here we are in the Arduino IDE 2.0. I want you to know that these shortcuts are gonna work for the original IDE and for Arduino IDE 2.0, doesn’t matter which one you use. All right. The first shortcut you’re gonna learn is for Verify. So you should be verifying frequently. This little button right here that is control R on a PC and command R on a Mac. Quick side note. You see this output window in our IDE 2.0? If you don’t wanna see it down in the bottom right, you can click this and it’ll get rid of it. All right. Shortcut two, the Upload button. When you need to upload stuff to your board. That is control U on a PC and command U on a Mac. Shortcut number three. You want to open up the serial monitor without using your mouse and going all the way over to the right to serial monitor, or without going up to tools, serial monitor? Man, that takes forever. All you have to do is press shift control M and it’ll open it right up if you’re on a PC or shift command M if you’re on a Mac. And what’s nice is if you want to close it, you just do shift control M and it closes it, or shift command M, again on a Mac, and it’ll close it. All right. The fourth shortcut that I use all the time is auto format. So let’s say you’re typing out a for loop and stuff just starts getting all over the place and you’re like, man, this is a mess, and you don’t want to have to deal with the spaces yourself, you could go up to tools, auto format, but it’s a whole lot easier to just press control T on a PC or command T on a Mac, and it’s gonna auto format that code for you. See, auto format would probably be my favorite if it wasn’t for the next keyboard shortcut, and that is for commenting code. So how can you comment code? Highlight the code you want to comment, and then on a PC, you press control forward slash and it comments that code out. If you want to uncomment it, you just press control forward slash and it uncomments again. if you’re on a Mac, it’s the exact same thing except you’re using command forward slash. So this is probably my favorite but it’s the toss up between this and auto format. Okay. Another super handy keyboard shortcut, this is actually two in one, is if you are focused on a piece of code and you’re trying to figure out and you wanna make the font bigger. Well, what you could do is go up to the preferences and then you could just adjust this font size to make the font size bigger, right? Like that, and it makes it a little bit bigger. Or, increasing font size is control equal sign, and decreasing font size is control minus sign. Me, I love really large font sizes. I don’t know, it makes it easier on my eyes, I guess, but I know some folks, they go with crazy small font size, whatever. I’m just saying, it’s nice to have the flexibility to shift it around if you want to. All right, here is the last one coming in hot at you. And that is Find Next. So let’s say you’re looking at a variable and you’re like, where the heck is this variable show up? You highlight the variable and then you press control G and it takes you to the next instance. And you can just keep pressing control G, and it’s gonna take you all through those instances. Now, you could press command F and it’s gonna open up the little search dialogue box, which is kind of cool, then you can do that. But if you don’t want to, here you have to use your mouse to go up and down and that’s like, oh, that’s kind of a pain in the butt, but so on a PC, it’s control G to find next, and shift control G to find previous. On a Mac, that’s command G to find next, and shift command G to find previous. All right, so that’s it. Seven super easy shortcuts. Verify is control R, upload is control U, opening the serial monitor is shift control M, auto format is control T, comment is control forward slash, increasing and decreasing font size is control equal sign or control minus, and Find Next is control G, and Find Previous is shift control G. All right, before you go, I got a pneumonic that I think should help you remember all these when you open up the Arduino IDE. Here goes. Victor Runs Up Under SMurfs SMitten After Total Chaos Forward Slashing IDentified EneMies For No Person Goes Shift G. Well, hey. Thanks a ton for watching. I hope you found these shortcuts really helpful. If you did, I invite you to like the video and while you’re down there, please subscribe to the channel. Doesn’t cost you anything but a click but it really does help us bring you better content. Also, if you really want to dive into this Arduino programming, check out our training program at programmingelectronics.com, where you can learn how to program your own electronic projects. If I left out some keyboard shortcuts or maybe you’ve got a better pneumonic for remembering these or maybe you’re having some other type of issue, please just mention it in the comments and I will answer it as best as I can. Thanks a ton and have a great one. Bye.