A full reference of every keyboard shortcut in the outliner. If you’d rather click than memorise, the Task Outliner Toolbar surfaces the most common commands as buttons with their shortcuts shown alongside.
Task Creation & Structure
Shortcut
Action
Enter
Create new task (splits at cursor)
⌘Enter / CtrlEnter
Create sibling task (insert after, no split)
⌘ShiftEnter / CtrlShiftEnter
Create child task (subtask)
Tab
Indent task (make subtask)
ShiftTab
Outdent task (un-nest)
Task Movement
Shortcut
Action
⌘↑ / Ctrl↑
Move task up
⌘↓ / Ctrl↓
Move task down
⌘Shift↑ / CtrlShift↑
Move to top of siblings
⌘Shift↓ / CtrlShift↓
Move to bottom of siblings
⌘/ / Ctrl/
Move under a different parent (opens a picker)
Move-to-top/bottom keeps the task among its current siblings (same parent, same level) — it moves as far as it can go without changing what it’s nested under. A task with subtasks brings them along.
To re-file a task under a different parent, press ⌘/ (or type / after a space) anywhere in its title — a search box opens where you pick the new parent. The parent can be anywhere in your outline, even one that isn’t currently on screen; the task moves there and slips out of the current view.
The picker also pins a Top level row at the top. Choose it — or just press Enter on the empty search box — to promote a nested task all the way up to the top of your outline (no parent) in one step, instead of outdenting repeatedly.
Expand & Collapse
Shortcut
Action
⌘. / Ctrl.
Toggle expand/collapse
⌘Shift. / CtrlShift.
Toggle all nested
These shortcuts work at any level of the task hierarchy. When in a parent task, ⌘Shift. affects all nested subtasks.
Why not the arrow keys?⌘← / ⌘→ (and their Shift variants) are left to your operating system for text editing — jumping to the start/end of a title and selecting to the line edge. Since you’re always editing text in the outliner, folding lives on ⌘. instead.
Focus In / Out
Shortcut
Action
⌘⌥→ / CtrlAlt→
Focus into task’s subtree
⌘⌥← / CtrlAlt←
Focus out to parent
Focus In scopes the outliner to show only a task’s descendants, with a breadcrumb trail to navigate back up. Press Focus Out to zoom back to the parent level, or click any breadcrumb link to jump directly.
Change type — cycles task → info → folder → project
⌘A / CtrlA
Select all siblings; press again to select every task in the outline
Search
Shortcut
Action
⌘F / CtrlF
Open search
↓ or →
Next match
↑ or ←
Previous match
Enter
Jump to match (selects text)
Escape
Cancel search and restore position
Search highlights all matches in yellow, with the current match in orange. Collapsed sections automatically expand to show matches. When you press Escape, your original cursor position and collapsed state are restored.
Filter
Shortcut
Action
⌘ShiftF / CtrlShiftF
Open the filter
Tab (from the Find bar)
Turn the current search into a filter
Escape
Cancel the filter and restore the full outline
Where Find highlights matches and jumps between them, Filter reshapes the whole outline to show only matching tasks — each still nested under the projects and folders that contain it. Filter by words, by bucket (@today), or by node type (type:event). See Filtering the Outliner for the full guide and examples.
Commands
Shortcut
Action
/
Set parent task (opens parent-picker menu)
@
Set bucket (@today, @next, @later, …)
type:
Change node type (opens the type menu: task, project, folder, info)
Help
Shortcut
Action
⌘? / Ctrl?
Show this shortcut reference in a modal, without leaving the outliner