15 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for QuickTime
Apple’s QuickTime is the go-to Mac OS X app for video playback, but there’s more to QuickTime Player than meets the eye. You can rewind and fast-forward movies, increase the audio level beyond the slider limit, and even scrub frame by frame through the movie like you can in Final Cut Pro! Check out these 15 useful and largely hidden keyboard shortcuts for QuickTime Player, they are sure to improve your QuickTime movie viewing experience!
QuickTime Keyboard Shortcuts
Spacebar – Play and pause video playback
J – Rewind movie, you can J multiple times to rewind the movie faster
K – Pauses the movie
L – Fast forward within the movie, with audio, again you can tap L multiple times to fast forward in the movie at a faster pace
Hold down K and tap J or L – allows you to scrub the video in slow motion, viewing in either rewind or forward frame by frame
I – Sets the “In” or beginning point of the selection
O – Set the “Out” or end point of the selection
Option-Left Arrow – Go to the beginning of the selection of the movie
Option-Right Arrow – Go to end of the selection of the movie
Shift-double-click Command-Left Arrow – Playback the movie in reverse
Option-Up Arrow – Increase maximum audio volume beyond slider level limit
Option-Down Arrow – Mute audio
Up Arrow – Increase volume level
Down Arrow – Decrease volume level
. – pause video playback, using in combination with the Spacebar you can single in on a single frame quite easily
Update: Reader Austin W. noted that many of the above QuickTime shortcuts are not working in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, he has created the following list of working QuickTime Shortcuts for 10.6. Thanks Austin!
QuickTime Keyboard Shortcuts for 10.6 Snow Leopard
Spacebar – Play and pause video playback
Command-Left Arrow – Rewind movie, you can press multiple times to rewind the movie faster
Command-Right Arrow – Fast forward within the movie, with audio, again you can tap multiple times to fast forward in the movie at a faster pace
Left and Right Arrows (With no modifier keys) – allows you to scrub the video in slow motion, viewing in either rewind or forward frame by frame
Option-Left Arrow – Go to the beginning of the selection of the movie
Option-Right Arrow – Go to end of the selection of the movie
Option-Up Arrow – Increase volume to maximum volume
Option-Down Arrow – Mute audio
Up Arrow – Increase volume level
Down Arrow – Decrease volume level
This would be great if there wasn’t a new version of Quicktime coming out in less than a month with Snow Leopard. I’m currently running OS X 10.6 with Quicktime 10.0, and the keyboard shortcuts have been altered slightly. The biggest change is that the JKL buttons don’t do anything anymore. In fact, there are no keyboard shortcuts involving letters that I am aware of. I’ve taken your list and tried the commands in Quicktime 10.0. Any commands that did not work I’ve removed and I’ve corrected the ones that I knew had an alternative.
Spacebar – Play and pause video playback
Command-Left Arrow – Rewind movie, you can press multiple times to rewind the movie faster
Command-Right Arrow – Fast forward within the movie, with audio, again you can tap multiple times to fast forward in the movie at a faster pace
Left and Right Arrows (With no modifier keys) – allows you to scrub the video in slow motion, viewing in either rewind or forward frame by frame
Option-Left Arrow – Go to the beginning of the selection of the movie
Option-Right Arrow – Go to end of the selection of the movie
Option-Up Arrow – Increase volume to maximum volume
Option-Down Arrow – Mute audio
Up Arrow – Increase volume level
Down Arrow – Decrease volume level
Is there anyway to change the full screen keyboard shortcut (CMD+F) of Quicktime 7.5 to “Mouse double click”?
I am so used to this functionality that I can’t stand this at all.
Another keyboard shortcut that I just figured out is if you hold down option & command at the same time while clicking the fast forward button, the movie playback speed will increase by .1 increments rather then 1.0 increments that only holding down the command key does.
Is there a way to slow down the video and still be able to hear the audio? I am trying to transcribe a video, and I keep having to stop it. I have Quicktime 10.0 and Snow Leopard.
You did not mention the simple arrow keys for frame-by-frame stepping – thi only works in QT 7, and it’s a feature i really miss in QT for snow leopard!
Good blog Wow!ij This s exactly what I was looking for!
Many thanks for this list of keyboard shortcuts – it all came in very handy when I had to give a video presentation yesterday evening.
Same thing here as London Sounds said. This comes in extremely handy for presentations as it takes away a lot of the fumbling around. Thank you.