Reddit Keyboard Shortcuts
Reddit's keyboard shortcuts are a holdover from its old-school link-aggregator roots, where power users navigated entirely by single-letter keys long before the current redesigned interface existed — and remarkably, most of those original bindings still work today, layered underneath the modern visual design. The shortcuts matter most for fast feed scanning (moving between posts, expanding comments, voting) without reaching for the mouse, which adds up over long browsing sessions. These work the same regardless of operating system since Reddit is a website, though they only function reliably with the browser's focus on the page itself rather than inside a text field. Multi-reddit and subreddit-switching shortcuts exist for users who follow many communities and want to jump between them without navigating through the sidebar list manually each time, reflecting how much of a power user's Reddit session is spent bouncing between several specific subreddits rather than staying in one place. Moderator-specific shortcuts, available only to users with mod permissions on a given subreddit, add another invisible layer for approving, removing, or locking posts and comments directly from the keyboard — invisible in the sense that a regular user pressing the same keys in a subreddit they don't moderate simply sees nothing happen, similar to how Zoom's host-only shortcuts behave for non-hosts. NSFW preview toggling and crossposting both matter for the realistic texture of a heavy Reddit session across many subreddits with varying content policies and community overlap, since quickly checking a flagged thumbnail without a full click-through, or sharing a genuinely relevant post into a second interested community without creating a disconnected duplicate, are both routine parts of how the platform's content actually spreads between communities.
Feed Navigation
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Select next post | J | J | Moves the highlighted selection down to the next post in the current feed, the primary way to scan a feed without scrolling manually with the mouse. |
| Select previous post | K | K | Steps the highlight back up to the previous post in the feed, mirroring the next-post navigation key in reverse. |
| Open selected post | Enter or O | Enter or O | Opens the currently highlighted post's full thread and comments, equivalent to clicking the post title directly. |
| Go to home feed | Shift+H | Shift+H | Jumps directly to the home feed from anywhere on the site, bypassing whatever subreddit or thread you're currently viewing. |
| Jump to a specific subreddit | Shift+S (varies) or address bar | Shift+S | Opens a prompt or navigates directly to a subreddit by name, faster for power users who regularly bounce between several specific communities than clicking through a sidebar list each time. |
| Reveal/hide NSFW content preview | V (with post selected, varies) | V | Toggles the blurred preview state of a post marked NSFW without opening the full post, useful for quickly checking whether a flagged thumbnail is actually relevant to your interests before committing to open it. |
Voting Actions
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upvote selected post or comment | A | A | Casts an upvote on whichever post or comment is currently highlighted; pressing it again removes the vote rather than stacking additional votes. |
| Downvote selected post or comment | Z | Z | Casts a downvote on the currently highlighted post or comment, with the same toggle behavior as upvoting — pressing it twice removes the vote. |
| Save selected post | S | S | Adds the currently highlighted post to your saved items list for later reading, without needing to open the post's overflow menu manually. |
| Hide selected post | X | X | Removes the currently highlighted post from your feed view, useful for clearing content you've already seen or don't want to see again without downvoting it. |
| Remove post (moderator only) | Shift+R (mod permissions required) | Shift+R | Removes the highlighted post from the subreddit, functional only for users with moderator permissions on that specific subreddit — pressing it as a regular user does nothing, mirroring how permission-gated shortcuts behave in other tools like Zoom's host-only controls. |
| Crosspost selected post | Post overflow menu > Crosspost (no keyboard shortcut) | — | Shares the highlighted post into a different subreddit as a linked crosspost, preserving attribution to the original post rather than reposting the content as a brand-new independent submission. |
| Give an award to selected post/comment | Award icon on post/comment (no keyboard shortcut) | — | Opens the award picker for giving a purchased or free award to the currently highlighted post or comment, a monetized appreciation feature layered on top of the basic upvote/downvote system. |
Comments
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expand/collapse selected comment | Tab then Enter, or click | Tab then Enter, or click | Toggles whether a comment's replies are shown or collapsed, useful for collapsing long subthreads you're not interested in while reading a busy comment section. |
| Reply to selected comment | R | R | Opens a reply box directly under the currently highlighted comment, without scrolling to find and click its reply link manually. |
| Jump to next comment | J (inside thread view) | J | Inside an open post's comment section, moves selection to the next top-level or nested comment in reading order. |
| Collapse all top-level comments | Z then A (varies) | Z then A | Collapses every top-level comment thread at once in a busy comment section, useful for getting a quick overview of how many distinct discussion branches exist before diving into any one of them. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why don't J and K do anything when I press them?
Reddit's keyboard shortcuts only activate when the page itself has keyboard focus and you're not currently typing inside a text field (a comment box, search bar, etc.). If you recently clicked into a text input, clicking elsewhere on the empty page background first restores the shortcuts.
Is there a difference between Hide and downvoting a post?
Yes — downvoting affects the post's visible score and Reddit's ranking algorithm for other users, while Hide is purely personal: it just removes the post from your own feed view going forward without affecting its score or anyone else's experience of it.
Do these shortcuts work on old.reddit.com as well as the redesigned site?
The core navigation and voting shortcuts (J, K, A, Z, S) work on both versions since they're part of Reddit's long-standing legacy shortcut system, though old.reddit.com tends to have a few additional power-user shortcuts that were never carried over to the redesigned interface.
Do moderator shortcuts work on subreddits I don't moderate if I know the key combination?
No — moderator-only actions like removing a post are gated by actual permission on that specific subreddit, checked server-side, so pressing the corresponding key combination as a regular non-mod user simply has no effect, the same permission-gating pattern seen in tools like Zoom for host-only controls.
Is there a faster way to browse multiple specific subreddits together instead of switching one at a time?
Reddit supports custom multi-reddits (a combined feed pulling from several chosen subreddits at once), which is a more efficient approach than repeatedly switching individual subreddits if you regularly follow the same specific group of communities together.
What's the benefit of collapsing all top-level comments before reading a thread?
It gives a quick structural overview of how many separate discussion branches exist in a large comment section before committing to reading any single one in full, which is useful for deciding where to focus your attention first rather than scrolling linearly through an enormous uncollapsed thread.
Can I customize the keyboard shortcuts Reddit uses, or are they fixed?
Reddit's shortcuts are largely fixed system-wide bindings rather than user-customizable, though old.reddit.com and the redesigned site can have slightly different available shortcuts, so the specific set you have access to depends somewhat on which version of the site you're using.
Is crossposting the same as just copying a link into a new post in a different subreddit?
Not quite — crossposting creates a linked reference back to the original post rather than an independent duplicate submission, preserving the original post's own comment thread and attribution, whereas manually copying a link and posting it fresh in another subreddit creates an entirely separate post with its own comment section disconnected from the original.