Ulysses Keyboard Shortcuts
Ulysses targets long-form writers specifically — novelists, journalists, bloggers — and its shortcuts reflect that focus, leaning on Markdown-style typed formatting shortcuts similar to other modern writing apps, plus a distinctive Library and Sheet organizational system with its own dedicated navigation shortcuts. Its Goal-tracking feature (setting a target word or character count for a piece and monitoring progress toward it) is fairly unique among the note-taking and writing apps covered on this site, reflecting Ulysses' orientation toward disciplined, sustained long-form writing projects rather than quick note capture. Ulysses ships only for Apple platforms, so its shortcuts exist in a single Cmd-based form rather than needing a parallel Windows mapping. This page is aimed at writers already committed to Ulysses' Library-and-Sheet mental model for organizing a large body of work — a novel-in-progress, a season of a podcast script, years of blog drafts — rather than someone taking a single quick note, since that's the use case where the Sheet, Group, and Goal shortcuts genuinely earn their place over a simpler plain-text editor. The formatting shortcuts will feel immediately familiar if you've used any other Markdown-based writing tool, but the Library navigation and Goal-tracking bindings are worth deliberately practicing since they don't have an equivalent muscle memory to draw on from other apps.
Text Formatting
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bold selected text | — | Cmd+B | Wraps selected text in Markdown bold syntax (double asterisks), rendering visually bold within Ulysses' Markdown-aware editor while remaining plain-text-compatible underneath. |
| Italicize selected text | — | Cmd+I | Puts single asterisks around the selected text for italics, sitting alongside bold as one of the plain-text Markdown markers Ulysses stores underneath its styled reading view. |
| Apply heading level | — | Cmd+1 through Cmd+3 (heading levels) | Applies a Markdown heading level to the current line, inserting the appropriate number of leading hash symbols, with the specific number key corresponding to the heading depth. |
| Mark text as a comment | — | Cmd+Shift+K | Marks the selected text as an author comment/note, visually distinguished from the main content and automatically excluded from exports — useful for leaving writing notes-to-self without needing to delete or separately track them outside the document. |
| Strike through selected text | — | Cmd+Shift+X | Applies Markdown strikethrough formatting to the selection, useful for marking text intended for deletion during a review pass without actually removing it yet, keeping the original wording visible alongside the edit decision. |
Sheet Library
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create new Sheet | — | Cmd+N | Creates a new Sheet, Ulysses' term for an individual document/writing unit, within the currently selected Library group. |
| Create new Group | — | Cmd+Shift+N | Creates a new Group, Ulysses' folder-like organizational container for grouping related Sheets together, such as chapters within a novel project. |
| Quick Search across Library | — | Cmd+F | Opens search across the entire Ulysses Library, finding text within any Sheet regardless of which Group it belongs to. |
| Merge selected Sheets | — | Right-click selection > Merge, no default single key | Combines multiple selected Sheets into a single Sheet in their current order, useful for consolidating several smaller drafted sections into one continuous document once a structure has solidified. |
| Filter Library by keyword, date, or status | — | Cmd+Option+F | Opens a filter panel for narrowing the visible Library list by criteria like attached keywords, last-modified date, or completion status, useful for quickly surfacing every Sheet tagged for a specific revision pass across a large project. |
| Duplicate the current Sheet | — | Cmd+Shift+D | Creates an exact copy of the current Sheet in the same Group, useful before making a risky structural edit you might want to revert, or for branching an alternate draft direction without losing the original. |
Focus Goals
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toggle Typewriter Mode | — | Cmd+Shift+T | Toggles Typewriter Mode, which keeps the current line of text vertically centered in the editor as you type, mimicking a physical typewriter's fixed typing position rather than text scrolling upward continuously. |
| Toggle Focus Mode | — | Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+F | Dims everything except the current paragraph or sentence (configurable), a distraction-reduction feature aimed at keeping attention on the immediate text being written rather than the surrounding document. |
| Set writing Goal for current Sheet | — | Cmd+Shift+G | Opens the Goal configuration for the current Sheet, letting you set a target word or character count and track live progress toward it, a feature aimed specifically at supporting disciplined long-form writing projects with a defined length target. |
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the actual difference between a Sheet and a Group in Ulysses?
A Sheet is an individual writing unit — roughly analogous to a single document or file — while a Group functions like a folder, containing multiple Sheets (and potentially nested sub-Groups) for organizational purposes, such as grouping every chapter of a novel as separate Sheets within one Group representing the whole book project.
Does merging Sheets lose any content or formatting?
Merging combines the selected Sheets' text content into a single Sheet in their current display order, generally preserving the Markdown formatting within each original Sheet's content, though it's a one-way operation in the sense that the individual pre-merge Sheet boundaries aren't automatically recoverable afterward without manually re-splitting the merged content back apart, so it's worth being confident in a Sheet's finalized order before merging.
Why does Ulysses use plain-text Markdown instead of a rich-text/WYSIWYG editor?
Plain-text Markdown ensures Ulysses documents remain portable and future-proof, readable and editable in essentially any plain text editor even outside Ulysses itself, and avoids proprietary rich-text formatting lock-in — a deliberate design philosophy shared by several other long-form and technical writing tools that prioritize format longevity and portability over the more visually immediate feedback of a true WYSIWYG rich-text editor.
What's a practical use for duplicating a Sheet rather than just editing it directly?
Duplicating gives you a safe branch point before a substantial rewrite or structural change — you can experiment freely on the copy while the original stays untouched as a fallback, which is particularly useful for trying an alternate ending, tone shift, or reorganization on a long piece where you're not fully confident the new direction will actually work out better than what you already have.
Can the Goal feature track something other than a simple word count?
Yes — Goals in Ulysses can be configured to track either word count or character count, and can be set as either a straightforward minimum target or a stricter fixed range with both a minimum and maximum, which is useful for writing constrained to a specific length requirement, such as an article with a strict word ceiling rather than an open-ended minimum target.
Does Ulysses have a shortcut for attaching a note to the currently selected sheet?
Yes — Ctrl+Cmd+N attaches a note to the currently open sheet, a separate annotation layer distinct from the sheet's main text content, useful for leaving yourself editorial reminders or research links that shouldn't appear in the final exported or published version of the writing.