Hotkeys

All global and in-app hotkeys below can be rebound from Settings → Hotkeys; defaults are shown here. See Settings → Hotkeys page for the settings UI itself.

Global hotkeys

Action	Default	Notes
Toggle quick window	Double-tap Ctrl	Can also be set to a full combo (e.g. Alt+Space) instead of a double-tap.
Quick switch	Ctrl+G	Switches between the inline (embedded-in-Explorer) search bar and the main window.
Select next item	Ctrl+N	Also works as the literal Down arrow.
Select previous item	Ctrl+P	Also works as the literal Up arrow.
Jump to result 1–9	Ctrl + digit	The modifier is configurable; the digit is always 1–9. The quick window shows each visible result's shortcut as a small badge next to it, so you don't have to count rows.
Open actions menu	Ctrl+O	Also works as the literal Right arrow on a selected result.
Complete from selection	Ctrl+Tab	In the quick window, fills the search box with the selected result's name/path.
QuickLook preview	Alt+P	Toggles the preview pane for the selected result.
Previous keyword history	Alt+Up	Cycles backward through your recently typed queries.
Next keyword history	Alt+Down	Cycles forward through your recently typed queries.
Delete keyword history entry	Ctrl+Delete
Open full window	(none)	Opens the full window directly, carrying over the current query — same effect as left-clicking the Quick Window's own logo and choosing Show Main Window from the menu that opens, without that extra step. Not bound by default; set one from Settings → Hotkeys.
Next Startup Panel tab	Ctrl+Right	Wraps from the last tab back to the first. Only active while the Startup Panel is showing — otherwise the key does its normal job (e.g. moving the caret while typing a query).
Previous Startup Panel tab	Ctrl+Left	Wraps from the first tab back to the last. Same active-only-while-showing rule as above.
Keep window open	Ctrl+T	Quick window only. Stops it hiding when focus moves elsewhere, so a query can be assembled out of text copied from other windows — hiding would otherwise clear the search box each time. Lasts for the current summon and ends with the next hide. Middle-clicking the logo does the same thing, and the logo brightens while it is on; pressing the summon hotkey while it is up but unfocused brings it back rather than hiding it.

Search box logo icon

The small logo icon in the search box (left or right side, depending on the window) does something different in each of the three windows:

• Quick window — left-click (no movement) opens the same menu the tray icon's right-click shows (Show Main Window, Toggle Hotkeys, Settings, About, Clean Exit, Exit), anchored at the cursor; that menu's Show Main Window item also carries over whatever query you currently have typed. Click-and-drag moves the window, same as dragging any other part of the search bar — hold Ctrl while dragging (either the bar or the logo, and toggling Ctrl mid-drag works too) to constrain movement to vertical only, useful for nudging the window up or down without shifting it sideways. Right-click resets the window to its default on-screen position (not size) — the same one it centers to on first launch. A hover tooltip spells out all three behaviors.

  The remembered position is relative to whichever monitor the window was last on, not an absolute screen coordinate — summon it again on a different monitor (or one with a different resolution or DPI scaling) and it reopens at the equivalent spot there instead of potentially landing off-screen or on the wrong display.

• Inline window — only clickable when the window is docked to a native Open/Save/Browse-for-folder dialog: left-click opens quick navigation, same as the dedicated trigger below. Not clickable when docked to a plain Explorer window or the desktop, since there's nothing useful to navigate to in that case — no hover highlight or tooltip appears either, so it stays quiet rather than looking clickable and doing nothing.

• Main window — the logo is purely decorative there; clicking it does nothing.

Quick navigation (mouse)

Enabled by default, toggled per-trigger in settings:

• Double-click empty space on the desktop or inside an Explorer window to trigger quick navigation.
• Middle-click empty space on the desktop or inside an Explorer window — or the file list of a supported third-party file manager (Directory Opus, Total Commander, XYplorer, Files, ...), or a native Open/Save/Browse-for-folder dialog — to trigger quick navigation. Those other windows only respond to middle-click: double-clicking there already means "open this," so double-click isn't repurposed. See Supported File Managers for what each integration covers.
• When the inline search window is docked to a native Open/Save/Browse-for-folder dialog, its own logo triggers quick navigation too — see Search box logo icon above.

Any of these triggers pops a cascading menu of your Favorites, History, and configured quick-access folders (see Settings → Favorites and Settings → History) — plugins can contribute their own entries too, such as Total Commander's own Directory Hotlist if you've set one up in wincmd.ini, Directory Opus's own Favorites menu, or a Custom Command flagged "Show in Quick Navigation" (optionally nested into a submenu by giving it a /-separated path). Each contributing plugin gets its own labeled section at the root of the menu, and the order those sections appear in is yours to set — see Settings → General → Quick Navigation. Clicking a folder navigates the target window there; clicking a file navigates there too, landing on the file selected in its containing folder rather than opening it — the one exception is the desktop, which has no existing window pane to navigate within, so there a folder or file is opened directly, same as double-clicking it would. Inside a file dialog specifically, clicking a file instead jumps the dialog to that file's folder — it deliberately never auto-confirms Open/Save on your behalf.

The Folder Cascader plugin is what actually builds this menu. Beyond Favorites and History (each independently toggleable), it has its own configurable list of quick-access folders — from Settings → Plugins → Folder Cascader → Configure, add a folder's path and an optional display name, and give it a Submenu value (e.g. Tools/Network, /-separated for multiple levels) to nest it under a category instead of showing it at the root. Every level of the menu — the root and any nested category — also has a small + button on its own header: click it to add the folder you're currently browsing right there, pre-filled with its name, path, and that level's own submenu path (all still editable before confirming), without leaving the menu to open Settings.

Hardcoded keys (not configurable)

These always behave the same way regardless of your hotkey settings:

Key	Context	Behavior
Escape	Anywhere	Clears the search box if it has text; otherwise closes the window (or exits the actions menu).
Enter	Result list	Opens the selected result.
Ctrl+Enter	Result list	Locates the result in Explorer instead of opening it.
Ctrl+Shift+Enter	Result list	Opens the result elevated (Run as administrator).
Left / Right arrow	Actions menu	Go back a menu level / enter a submenu.
Backspace	Actions menu	Exits the actions menu when the search box is already empty.
Alt+Space / Alt+F4	All of SwiftList's own windows	Alt+Space is suppressed on all of them: none has a real title bar for the Windows system menu to belong to. Alt+F4 closes the main and settings windows as usual; it stays suppressed on the quick, inline and QuickLook windows and the dialogs, which are shown and hidden rather than opened and closed.

Plugin action hotkeys

Plugins can register their own actions with a default hotkey (e.g. copy path (Ctrl+Shift+C), run as admin, or the built-in file actions — Cut Ctrl+X, Copy Ctrl+C, Paste Ctrl+V, Delete Delete, Permanently Delete Shift+Delete). These show up under Settings → Hotkeys → Plugin Actions, grouped by the plugin that registered them, and can be rebound the same way as built-in hotkeys.

Process blacklist

If SwiftList's global hotkeys interfere with another application (a game capturing raw keyboard input, for example), add that process to the Process Blacklist — see Settings → Hotkeys page. While a blacklisted process is in the foreground, SwiftList's global hotkeys, keystroke interception, and the quick navigation mouse triggers above are all let through untouched.

Any foreground app that's genuinely full-screen gets this same treatment automatically — no blacklist entry needed. Either way, an active file dialog is always exempt, so quick navigation still works there.