Last updated: 2026-09-25

Keyboard Shortcuts

Reference for query execution, navigation, editing, and results shortcuts on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

The shortcuts in the Global, Query Editor, Notebook, Visual Query Editor and foreign key breadcrumb tables can be changed in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts; see Customising shortcuts. To use the keys of SSMS, Azure Data Studio, DataGrip, DBeaver or the VS Code mssql extension, pick that tool’s shortcut scheme.

Global Shortcuts

These shortcuts work throughout the application, regardless of which panel has focus.

You can change these shortcuts in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.

Tab Strip Keyboard Navigation

The workspace tab strip is a single keyboard stop: only the active tab is in the Tab order, so pressing Tab moves on to the next toolbar/panel instead of walking every open tab.

• Arrow Left / Right — move focus between tabs (does not activate them); focus wraps from the last tab back to the first
• Enter or Space — activate the focused tab
• Shift+F10 (or the Menu key) — open the focused tab's right-click menu from the keyboard
• Middle-click — close a tab without switching to it first
• The close button becomes visible once a tab has keyboard focus, not only on mouse hover

Command Palette

The Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux) gives you fuzzy-searchable access to every command, database object, saved connection, and setting from a single keyboard-driven interface.

What You Can Do

• Run workspace commands — open a New Query, Table Explorer, Schema Compare, Data Compare, start a cross-engine migration (Migrate Database/Table to Connection), and more
• Search database objects — find tables, views, stored procedures, and functions by name, then drill down into contextual actions (Select Top, Script CREATE, Design Table, etc.)
• Quick-connect — search saved connections and connect with a single Enter
• Toggle settings — switch dark mode, open specific settings sections, toggle sidebar or terminal
• Navigate — go to Home, open Tab History, expand Explorer or Scripts panel

Tips

• Each command shows its keyboard shortcut badge, so the palette doubles as a shortcut reference.
• Use Shift+Enter on a command that needs a connection to force the connection/database selector dialog instead of using the explorer's current selection.
• Press Backspace on an empty search to return from an object's action sub-menu to the main search.
• The palette is also accessible from the search trigger on the Start Page and the toolbar search button.

Query Editor Shortcuts

Shortcuts for writing and executing SQL queries in the query editor. The Execution, View, IntelliSense and Transactions shortcuts, and Save, Save As and Format SQL under Editing, can be changed in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts; the other editing shortcuts are fixed.

Execution

With the cursor on an empty line between or after statements, Cmd/Ctrl+Enter and Shift+Enter run the statement above the cursor, while F5 runs the entire editor content. Above the first statement they run nothing and the status bar shows “No statement at cursor.”

F5 can run the active Query Editor while focus is on application controls such as the main toolbar or Object Explorer. Cmd/Ctrl+Enter and Shift+Enter remain scoped to the Query Editor surface and do not run from those controls.

While a Query tab shows its Visual view, F5 and Cmd/Ctrl+Enter run the statement shown there (the toolbar’s Execute reads Statement), and Shift+F5 still runs the whole script.

Shortcuts owned by the main Jam SQL window do not receive key events from the AWR report iframe. Click outside the report before using one of these shortcuts.

View

IntelliSense

Transactions

Editing

Cursor and Selection

Notebook Shortcuts

Shortcuts for saving the active notebook.

You can change these shortcuts, and Run cell, Run cell and advance and Run cell and insert below, in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.

Dashboards Shortcuts

Shortcuts for the SQL Dashboards grid. Focus a tile first (click it or Tab to it).

Visual Query Editor Shortcuts

Shortcuts for the Visual Query Editor (VQE) — the structural, no-SQL-typing view of the active statement. See Visual Query Editor for the full feature guide.

In a Query tab’s Visual view, Undo and Redo step through the Query Editor’s own history, so typed and visual edits undo in one order.

Toggle Visual view and Execute Active Statement can be changed in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts; the other Visual Query Editor keys are fixed.

Visual DDL Editor Shortcuts

Shortcuts for the Compact DDL editor popover (opened from the pencil affordance in the Query Editor) and the buffer-backed Table Designer. See Table Designer and Query Editor → Compact DDL Editor for full feature docs.

Navigation Shortcuts

Navigate between tabs, panels, and views — plus jump to a SQL identifier's definition, find its references, or rename it from the editor cursor. See Query Editor → Go to Definition, Find References, and Rename for the full feature breakdown.

Results Grid Shortcuts

Shortcuts for working with query results and table data.

Table Explorer Shortcuts

Shortcuts for browsing and editing table data in Table Explorer.

Azure Storage Browser Shortcuts

Shortcuts for the storage browser tab on an Azure Storage connection. They apply to blob containers and to file shares, share folders and share snapshots alike.

Foreign Key Breadcrumb Navigation

Walk the FK navigation tree inside a Table Explorer tab without taking your hands off the keyboard.

All four shortcuts can be changed in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.

Object Explorer Shortcuts

Shortcuts for navigating and interacting with database objects.

Snippets

Shortcuts for using code snippets.

Schema Overview Shortcuts

Shortcuts for navigating the schema visualization.

Customising shortcuts

Open Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts to change a shortcut. The tab lists every command you can rebind, grouped by where it works (Query Editor, notebooks, Visual Query Editor, PL/SQL editor and debugger, foreign key breadcrumb, global). Each row shows the current shortcuts, a badge — Default, Scheme default when the selected scheme sets the row, or Customised — and a Reset button once you have changed it. The search box filters by action name or by key, for example ctrl+j.

Recording a shortcut

• Click a shortcut and press the new keys. Esc cancels. Backspace removes that shortcut and its keys go back to the editor or the text field, so Shift+Enter inserts a newline again once it is removed from Execute Current Statement. If it was the command's only shortcut, the command is left without one.
• Click + to give a command a second shortcut. Both run it. A command without a shortcut shows Not bound; click it to record one.
• A shortcut needs Ctrl, Cmd or Alt, or a function key. Plain keys and Shift plus a character key are refused because they type text; Shift+Enter and Shift+F5 are fine.
• Keys that belong to the operating system or to the app menu’s built-in items, such as Cmd+Q, Cmd/Ctrl+C, Cmd/Ctrl+V, Cmd/Ctrl+Z and Alt+F4, are refused, and the tab says why. Pressing them while recording does not quit or copy anything. Cmd/Ctrl+W is Close Tab and can be changed; pressing it while recording does not close a tab.
• On macOS, Option (⌥) combinations also type characters in text fields, so a shortcut like Option+X only applies inside its own area of the app.
• Keys are recorded by the character your keyboard layout puts on them. While the app is still reading the layout, the recorder shows Loading keyboard layout…. A key the layout cannot name is recorded by its position and shown with its label, for example Ctrl+ö [Semicolon]. While a layout whose letters are not Latin, such as Russian or Greek, is active, a shortcut such as Ctrl+S works from the key that types S on a US keyboard. Layouts with Latin letters, such as German or French, are not changed this way: a key like ö or é runs only a shortcut recorded on that key.
• Cmd on macOS and Ctrl on Windows and Linux are saved as the same key, so an exported shortcut works on the other platform.

Conflicts

• If another command in the same area already uses the keys, the shortcut moves to the command you changed and the other command loses it. A note at the top of the tab says what moved and offers Undo.
• A command that works in one area, such as the Query Editor, can share a shortcut with a global command. Both rows show a warning: the Query Editor command runs while a Query Editor tab is active, and the global command runs everywhere else.
• A row shows a warning when a shortcut you recorded replaces one of the SQL editor’s own shortcuts while the editor has focus (for example Cmd/Ctrl+F, which would no longer open Find there). The shortcuts Jam SQL ships with do not repeat this warning; their editor costs are listed under Query Editor Shortcuts. Other warnings, such as a shortcut that works in the terminal being a common shell key, show on every row.
• A conflict that exists only on this platform, for example a Ctrl+Enter shortcut imported from a Mac, where Control and Command are different keys, is shown under the affected shortcut rather than at the top, and the shortcut stays saved.
• A shortcut that lost a conflict is crossed out. When it lost to another command’s shortcut, record the same keys again on it to make it win; the other command then loses them, with Undo at the top. A shortcut crossed out because of your keyboard layout, one the platform reserves, or one that is the same keys as another shortcut of the same command cannot win that way — choose different keys.

Reset, persistence and transfer

• Reset on a row returns that command to the selected scheme’s default. Reset all to scheme defaults resets every command and keeps the scheme. If a reset takes a shortcut back from another command, the note at the top says so.
• Changes are saved at once and kept after a restart. Toolbar tooltips, the Command Palette and the app menu show the new keys.
• Settings → Backup & Transfer includes your shortcuts in a settings export. Importing replaces the shortcuts on the other machine; a conflict found during the import that moved a shortcut is listed at the top of the tab, without Undo, and a conflict that exists only on this platform or keyboard layout, or a default shortcut that one of the imported shortcuts uses, is shown under the affected shortcut. A shortcut the other platform reserves, such as F11 for full screen on Windows and Linux, stays saved but does nothing there.
• Shortcuts saved by a newer version of Jam SQL for commands this version does not have are listed at the top of the tab with a Remove button.

Shortcut schemes

The Scheme picker at the top of the tab switches the defaults to another tool’s keys. Jam SQL (default) uses the shortcuts listed on this page. The other schemes change only the commands in the table below; every other command keeps its Jam SQL shortcut, and a row a scheme sets shows the Scheme default badge.

• Switching schemes keeps your own shortcuts. A scheme shortcut that clashes with one of yours is inactive while that scheme is active: it is crossed out with a note under its row, and nothing about that command is saved, so it gets its keys back when you switch to a scheme without the clash or change your own shortcut. If that command’s shortcuts change, its crossed-out shortcut is not kept; Reset brings the scheme’s shortcuts back and takes them from any other command that uses them, except a conflict caused by your keyboard layout, which needs different keys.
• Reset returns a row to the scheme’s shortcut, and Reset all to scheme defaults keeps the scheme.
• The scheme is saved with your shortcuts and included in a settings export.

Cmd/Ctrl+Enter and Shift+Enter run the statement under the cursor in every scheme; that is also what Cmd/Ctrl+Enter does in DataGrip and DBeaver. F5 runs the query in every scheme except the VS Code mssql extension, where Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+E replaces it. With DBeaver, Alt+X replaces Shift+F5. With the VS Code mssql extension scheme, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+E runs the query whenever a Query Editor tab is active, also while focus is in the Object Explorer or the results grid, and, as Execute does, runs the statement under the cursor in a multi-statement buffer rather than the whole document; outside Query Editor tabs the key keeps expanding the Explorer, and both rows show a note about it. Microsoft documents no macOS key for the SSMS results pane, so macOS keeps Cmd+J there. On many Linux desktops Ctrl+Alt+L, DataGrip’s Format SQL key, is the lock-screen shortcut, so the desktop may take it before Jam SQL sees it. On Windows keyboard layouts that have an AltGr key, such as German, Polish or French, Ctrl+Alt acts as AltGr, so Ctrl+Alt+L does not work as a shortcut there; record a different Format SQL key.

Sources, checked on 2026-09-23: SSMS keyboard shortcuts and the MSSQL extension and MSSQL Database Management Keymap shortcuts (Microsoft Learn); the DataGrip keyboard shortcuts, Run queries and Reformat code pages; the DBeaver shortcuts page.

What cannot be changed

The SQL editor’s editing shortcuts (comment, find, multi-cursor, move line), Notebook command-mode letters, Cmd/Ctrl+C and Escape in the results grids, the Azure Storage browser keys, the arrow keys in the tab strip, and the app menu’s built-in items such as Copy, Paste, Undo, Minimize and Quit keep their shortcuts.

Frequently asked questions