How to Create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts in Adobe Premiere Pro

Learn how to create your own custom keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Premiere Pro and save time editing videos! Watch the video below or keep reading to learn how.

It’s no secret I love keyboard shortcuts. I have another video all about my favorite quick keys already, and if you sign up for my email list I will send you a graphic to help you remember the most commonly used keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro.

Today I’m going to show you how to create your own custom keyboard shortcuts. Not every task in Premiere Pro comes pre-set with a keyboard shortcut. If you have a task you’re doing over and over again, it’s worth the minute it takes to set up a new shortcut because it will save you so much time.

How to create custom keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Premiere Pro

Creating your own keyboard shortcuts is really easy. Go up to the Premiere Pro menu and choose Keyboard Shortcuts.

This brings up a color coded keyboard that shows you all of your existing shortcuts. I don’t use all of these in my every day editing, but you might, so just be aware of what is already being used and we can adjust any of it as we work through this.

One thing that I do not have a keyboard shortcut for that I would like to is creating a new legacy title. This is a task I perform a lot (you can read my post on how to create titles two ways for more on why I like to use legacy titles in Premiere Pro) so I think it will save me a lot of time.

Towards the bottom left you can either search in the search box for the task you want, or scroll through the bottom to find it. The list starts out with some of the more commonly performed tasks, then menu items, and on and on for pretty much anything you can imagine.

After you find what you want to create a shortcut for, click under where it says “Shortcut” across from your task and you’ll see a blue outline created.

Decide what you want your actual shortcut to be, in this example I chose COMMAND + H, and enter that on the keyboard. You’ll see the shortcut box fill in with whatever you typed on the keyboard.

If you already had a shortcut assigned to that keystroke, you would get a little warning on the bottom of the screen alerting you to that. 

If you decide you don’t want to use that or any shortcut, simply click the x in that blue outline and it will be deleted.

To save your changes, be sure to click OK in the bottom right corner.

Creating custom keyboard shortcuts is so easy to do, I hope you’ll give it a try!

If you have any questions, head over to the Facebook group to start a conversation there.