I’ve been a JIRA administrator for over five years and have worked with hundreds of customers’ JIRA instances. I’m often asked, ‘How can I get more out of JIRA?’ For JIRA users, I always give the same answer: learn the keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts were first introduced in JIRA 4.1. Nothing will improve your speed throughout JIRA more than keyboard shortcuts. From creating issues, assigning work, and even administering the product, keyboard shortcuts will make you faster and more confident throughout JIRA.
0. Getting started
Keyboard shortcuts work throughout JIRA (and Confluence) outside of text fields. The most important keyboard shortcut is the ‘?’ key. The question mark brings up the help for all keyboard shortcuts. Open up your JIRA instance, press the ‘?’ key, and confirm you get the dialog below.
Tip: if you don’t see the above dialog, ensure the cursor is not inside of the text field. If you see the ‘?’ character when you press the key, click outside of the text field and try it again.
Now that you can see the power of keyboard shortcuts, let’s take a look at four areas we can optimize our time inside of JIRA.
1. Work with individual issues
Issues are the central concept inside of JIRA. The faster we can work with issues, the more we optimize our time inside of JIRA. Wherever you’re inside of JIRA and have an issue highlighted, you can take action on that issue.
– Assign
– Create
– Comment
– Edit
– Share
– All issue operations. Use the ‘.’ key to transition an issue.
2. Handle sets of issues
The next step in mastering keyboard shortcuts is working with sets of issues. When searching inside of JIRA using standard search or with JQL, JIRA will return a list of issues. The two most important keyboard shortcuts are ‘J’ and ‘K’.
- Previous
- Next
You’re probably thinking, how do ‘J’ and ‘K’ represent next and previous? The roots go back to the early days of UNIX where J and K mapped to previous and next before the advent of arrow keys. Many web applications like Gmail, Twitter, and Tumblr also use the same keyboard shortcut.
If we combine the ‘J’ and ‘K’ keys with the shortcuts in the previous section, we can quickly triage a list of issues inside of JIRA. Using list view, we can quickly assign issues using the ‘K’ and ‘A’ keys. Rather than using the mouse to click through each issue we can remain on the keyboard.
3. Navigate across JIRA
The ‘G’ key is your passport to navigate across JIRA. The ‘G’ key pairs with another key to select the destination screen. Let’s take a look at how the ‘G’ key works:
then 
– Go to the dashboard
then – Go to JIRA Agile
then 
– Go to issue search
then – Administrative search
Wherever I am inside of JIRA, the ‘G’ key gets me where I need to go!
4. Boost agility in JIRA Agile
JIRA Agile also supports an array of keyboard shortcuts. Many of the keyboard shortcuts inside of JIRA also work inside of JIRA Agile. The three most important shortcuts are unsurprisingly ’1′, ’2′, and ’3′.
– Go to plan mode
– Go to work mode
– Go to report mode
But you can do more inside of JIRA Agile with keyboard shortcuts. Just like ‘J’ and ‘K’ move between issues, ‘N’ and ‘P’ move between columns in work mode.
- Move to the previous column
– Move to the next column
If you’re working on a smaller screen or a projector during sprint planning, the ‘T’ and ‘Z’ keys help optimize screen space.
– hide and show detail view to conserve screen space
– Enable presentation mode
While you’re in sprint planning, move issues to the top of the sprint or backlog with ease.
then - Send the selected issue to the top of the list
then 
- Send the selected issue to the bottom of the list
So, ditch the mouse and get more out of JIRA by staying on the keyboard. I’m curious to know, what’s your favorite keyboard shortcut?
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