Shortcut Keys for Jupyter Notebook

There are no shortcuts to success but there are shortcut keys to success.

As a Data Scientist your selection between a keyboard and a mouse is going to make a lot of difference, just consider the sum total of data held by all the big online storage and service companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook is at least 1,200 petabytes between them. That is 1.2 million terabytes (one terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes). And that figure excludes other big providers like Dropbox, Barracuda and Sugar Sync, to say nothing of massive servers in industry and academia.

I believe in the computing world knowing the shortcut keys plays a very important role. Two alphabets’ that ruled the world of keyboard has been ‘c’ and ‘v’. The two shortcut keys in the keyboard that has changed our computing lives are

· Copy: Ctrl + C

· Paste: Ctrl + V.

These are just the entry points to the whole world of short cut keys just ensure you learn your bit to make life easier. As a Data Scientist one thing you are going to use is Jupyter notebook so let’s understand a small part of shortcut keys of Jupyter notebook that can help you work through your projects / labs.

The Jupyter notebook has two different keyboard input modes. Edit mode allows you to type code or text into a cell and is indicated by a green cell border. Command mode binds the keyboard to notebook level commands and is indicated by a grey cell border with a blue left margin.

Tab: code completion or indent

F: find and replace

Ctrl-Shift-F: open the command palette

Ctrl-Shift-P: open the command palette

Enter: enter edit mode

P: open the command palette

Shift-Enter: run cell, select below

Ctrl-Enter: run selected cells

Alt-Enter: run cell and insert below

Y: change cell to code

M: change cell to markdown

R: change cell to raw

1: change cell to heading 1

2: change cell to heading 2

3: change cell to heading 3

4: change cell to heading 4

5: change cell to heading 5

6: change cell to heading 6

K: select cell above

Up: select cell above

Down: select cell below

J: select cell below

Shift-K: extend selected cells above

Shift-Up: extend selected cells above

Shift-Down: extend selected cells below

Shift-J: extend selected cells below

Ctrl-A: select all cells

A: insert cell above

B: insert cell below

X: cut selected cells

C: copy selected cells

Shift-V: paste cells above

V: paste cells below

Z: undo cell deletion

D,D: delete selected cells

Shift-M: merge selected cells, or current cell with cell below if only one cell is selected

Ctrl-S: Save and Checkpoint

S: Save and Checkpoint

L: toggle line numbers

O: toggle output of selected cells

Shift-O: toggle output scrolling of selected cells

H: show keyboard shortcuts

I,I: interrupt the kernel

0,0: restart the kernel (with dialog)

Esc: close the pager

Q: close the pager

Shift-L: toggles line numbers in all cells, and persist the setting

Shift-Space: scroll notebook up

Space: scroll notebook down

Edit Mode (press Enter to enable)

Tab: code completion or indent

Shift-Tab: tooltip

Ctrl-]: indent

Ctrl-[: dedent

Ctrl-A: select all

Ctrl-Z: undo

Ctrl-/: comment

Ctrl-D: delete whole line

Ctrl-U: undo selection

Insert: toggle overwrite flag

Ctrl-Home: go to cell start

Ctrl-Up: go to cell start

Ctrl-End: go to cell end

Ctrl-Down: go to cell end

Ctrl-Left: go one word left

Ctrl-Right: go one word right

Ctrl-Backspace: delete word before

Ctrl-Delete: delete word after

Ctrl-Y: redo

Alt-U: redo selection

Ctrl-M: enter command mode

Ctrl-Shift-F: open the command palette

Ctrl-Shift-P: open the command palette

Esc: enter command mode

Shift-Enter: run cell, select below

Ctrl-Enter: run selected cells

Alt-Enter: run cell and insert below

Ctrl-Shift-Minus: split cell at cursor

Ctrl-S: Save and Checkpoint

Down: move cursor down

Up: move cursor up

Conclusion

The key is to spend some quality time with the Jupyter Note book & keyboard and figure out which ones you will like to use and improve your productivity. Again we all have a very long way to go and thanks for reading through believing it would add some value. Also feel free to share it with those you think will benefit 🙂

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