Linear keyboard shortcuts for Mac

Almost every shortcut in Linear is a single letter, and that is only possible because of a rule worth stating before any table: the letters act on the issue that is highlighted or selected. Highlighting is what the arrow keys and J and K do; selecting is what X does. With nothing in focus, or with a cursor in a text field, the same letters simply type.

Two-key sequences carry the rest. G followed by a letter goes to a page, O followed by a letter opens a picker for a thing, and M followed by a letter marks a relationship. They are sequences rather than chords — press one key, release, press the next.

⌘K is the escape hatch for everything else. It opens a command menu whose contents depend on what is in focus, so any action that has a shortcut can also be reached by name, and any action that does not have one can be reached at all. Pressing ? brings up Linear's own searchable list of shortcuts, which is the authority for whatever version you are running.

The G sequences move you to a page and the O sequences open a picker over whatever page you are on. They cover the sidebar entirely, which is the point — Linear's sidebar exists mostly for people who have not learned these.

Search splits three ways and the split matters. / searches the whole workspace across issues, projects and documents; ⌘F searches only the titles in the view you are looking at, behaving more like a temporary filter; and O then I opens recent issues, where you can also search by issue ID.

C is the shortcut Linear is known for: it opens the issue composer from anywhere in the app. V does the same in full screen, which is the one to use when the description is going to be more than a sentence. If you have text highlighted when you press either, it becomes the issue title.

⌘⇧O is the sub-issue equivalent, and it does more than open an editor. Select a bulleted or numbered list in a description and press it, and each line becomes a sub-issue — which is the fastest route from a rough checklist to actual tracked work.

This is the group that replaces the right-hand sidebar. Each letter opens the picker for one property on whatever is in focus, and pressing it again changes or clears what you set. They work on a single issue and on a multi-issue selection identically, which is what makes bulk editing in Linear feel like editing one thing.

I is the one people miss. It assigns the issue to you outright, with no picker in between, and it is the single fastest keystroke in a triage session.

X selects the highlighted issue, and everything else in this group builds on that. Hold ⇧ while moving with the arrow keys to extend the selection an issue at a time; ⌘A takes everything in the current list or board, which combines with a filter into a precise bulk edit — filter to no priority, ⌘A, then P.

The reordering chords only apply on a view ordered manually. ⌥⇧↑ and ⌥⇧↓ send the selection to the top or bottom, and ⌥↑ and ⌥↓ move it one position at a time.

⌘B flips any view between list and board, and ⇧V opens the display options behind it — grouping, ordering, and which properties are shown. ⌥V saves whatever you have filtered into a custom view, which is how a one-off filter becomes a page you can come back to.

Space is the one nobody finds by accident. Linear calls it peek, and it previews the focused issue the way Quick Look previews a file in the Finder. Tap it to keep the preview open and step through issues with the arrow keys; hold it to peek only for as long as you hold.

The Inbox has its own small set, and it is the one part of Linear where reading through with the keyboard genuinely beats clicking. J and K walk the list, U toggles read state, and H snoozes — the same key that sets a reminder on an issue elsewhere in the app.

⌥U is the morning shortcut: it marks every notification as read at once. ⇧⌫ is the harder version, deleting all the read ones.

The editor takes the chords your hands already know, with two Linear-specific ones worth learning: ⌘E for inline code and ⌘⇧\ for a fenced code block. ⌘K turns a selection into a link, and pasting an issue URL over selected text does the same thing without the chord.

Everything in the second list is a typed trigger rather than a shortcut, and for creating a block from scratch they beat any combination — you are already typing. They also read as ordinary typing on a recording, which is worth knowing when you are demonstrating Linear to someone.

Linear is the hardest kind of app to demonstrate, precisely because it is the best kind to use. The shortcuts are single letters with no modifier to see or hear, and the effect is a property changing somewhere in a dense list. A new teammate watching you triage sees a queue empty itself and learns nothing transferable — the whole lesson was in your hands.

Show KeyPress is a paid macOS menu bar app, for macOS 14 Sonoma or later, that draws each key you press as a mechanical keycap on top of everything else on screen. It has no Linear integration, nothing to install and no access to your workspace — it is a window drawn above your other windows, so any screen recorder or full-display share carries it.