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Hotkeys

QTranslate is built around being usable entirely from the keyboard. Every action has a hotkey, and every hotkey can be rebound from Settings → Keyboard & Hotkeys.

Global vs. app-local

Each hotkey has a scope:

  • Global — fires anywhere, in any application, whether or not QTranslate is focused. Used for actions you trigger on text selected in some other app, or for starting screen OCR from any application.
  • App-local — fires only while a QTranslate window has focus. Used for in-app actions like clearing the input, swapping languages, or opening settings, so the combination doesn't get taken away from every other application on your system.
  • Capture — fires only while the screen-capture selection overlay is open. These actions operate the capture toolbar (Translate, Copy Text, Copy Image, Save Image, Re-crop, Cancel). They are never registered globally or in the main window. See Screen OCR.

Show main window is a special case: instead of a configurable key combination, it fires on a double press of Ctrl (press Ctrl twice in quick succession). This can be turned off in Keyboard & Hotkeys if you don't want it.

Presets

Rather than rebind everything by hand, pick a preset from the dropdown at the top of Keyboard & Hotkeys:

  • Legacy QTranslate — the original QTranslate key scheme (Ctrl+Q for Quick Translate, Ctrl+E to listen, Ctrl+I for OCR, and so on).
  • Modern — an alternate scheme that moves most popup-opening actions onto Ctrl+Shift+<letter> combinations.
  • Custom — shown automatically the moment your bindings no longer match either preset exactly. There's nothing to select for Custom; it just reflects what you've changed.

Switching presets replaces every binding at once. If you only want to change one action, edit it directly instead — QTranslate will show Custom afterward, and that's expected.

Changing a binding

  1. Open Settings → Keyboard & Hotkeys
  2. Click the binding you want to change
  3. Press the new key combination
  4. Click Apply

Troubleshooting

A global hotkey doesn't fire Another application (or the OS itself) may already own that key combination. Try a different combination for the action, or close the application that might be intercepting it.

A hotkey works sometimes but not others Global hotkeys that capture selected text (Quick Translate, Listen, Replace, Dictionary, Images) need something selected first. If nothing is selected when the hotkey fires, there's nothing to act on. Screen OCR is different: it opens the capture overlay and does not use the current selection.

Double-Ctrl doesn't show the main window Confirm it's still enabled in Keyboard & Hotkeys — it has its own toggle, separate from the rest of the bindings. It also only counts two physical Ctrl presses in quick succession; a remapped or software-injected Ctrl key may not register the same way.