Ulysses comes with a wide range of keyboard shortcuts designed to make writing easier and more efficient. However, you may want to customize some of them to better suit your personal writing workflow.

Markup Shortcuts

First, we will show you how to create or change a shortcut for a markup tag. In the following example, we will assign the shortcut ⌃⌥⌘I to the Image tag.

1. Go to Ulysses › Settings… › Markup. 
2. Double-click the desired tag. 
3. In the upper-right corner of the window, click “Record Shortcut”. If a shortcut has already been assigned, you can click on it to change it.

4. Then, enter your preferred key combination.

 Your new shortcut will also appear in the Markup menu.

Menu Shortcuts

You can also create custom shortcuts for menu items. Let’s look at an example: if you frequently monitor your writing goals, you might want quicker access to them. Typically, you’d open them through the dashboard or by right-clicking a sheet and selecting “Goal…”. 

Instead of navigating with your mouse each time, you can assign a custom shortcut to this menu item for faster access. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Go to System Settings › Keyboard › Keyboard Shortcuts… › App Shortcuts.
2. Click the + button to create a new shortcut, and select Ulysses from the application list.
3. Enter the exact menu title. In this case, it’s Goal… Important: For the shortcut to work, the menu title must match exactly—including capitalization, punctuation, and any special characters.
4. Enter your preferred keyboard shortcut and click Done. Important: Make sure the shortcut you choose isn’t already used within Ulysses.

Now, when you open a sheet in Ulysses and press your new shortcut, the writing goal window will open automatically.

This also works for all items in the menu bar. Try it out with options such as “Make Upper Case” or “Add to Favorites.”