Input¶

In the Input preferences, you can customize how Blender reacts to the mouse and keyboard as well as define your own keymap.

Interaction¶

Interaction Presets: Presets that allow Blender to act like other software on your personal preference.

Mouse¶

Emulate 3 Button Mouse

Blender can be configured to work with pointing devices which do not have a MMB (such as a two-button mouse, Apple’s single-button mouse, or laptop touch-pad). The functionality of the three mouse buttons will then be emulated with key/mouse button combinations as shown in the table below.

Shortcuts for supported mouse hardware¶
3-button Mouse	2-button Mouse	Apple Mouse
`LMB`	`LMB`	`LMB` (mouse button)
`MMB`	`Alt-LMB`	`Alt-LMB` (Option/Alt key + mouse button)
`RMB`	`RMB`	`Cmd-LMB` (Command/Apple key + mouse button)

Mouse/Keyboard combinations referenced in this manual can be expressed with the combinations shown in the table. For example:

MMB drag becomes Alt-LMB drag.
Shift-Alt-RMB becomes Shift-Alt-Cmd-LMB on a single-button mouse.

Continuous Grab

This feature is used to prevent the problem where an action such as grabbing or panning a view, is limited by your screen bounds.

This is done by warping the mouse within the view.

Note

Cursor warping is only supported by relative input devices (mouse, trackball, trackpad).

Graphics tablets, however, typically use absolute positioning, this feature is disabled when a tablet is being used.

This is detected for each action, so the presence of a tablet will not disable Continuous Grab for mouse cursor input.

Drag Threshold

The number of pixels that a User Interface element has to be moved before it is recognized by Blender.

Select With

You can choose which button is used for selection (the other one is used to place the 3D cursor).

Double Click

The time in ms for a double click to be recognized.

Note

The Mouse emulate option is only available if Select With is set to Right.

Numpad Emulation¶

The Numpad keys are used quite often in Blender and are not the same keys as the regular number keys. If you have a keyboard without a Numpad (e.g. on a laptop), you can tell Blender to treat the standard number keys as Numpad keys. Just check Emulate Numpad.

View Manipulation¶

Orbit Style

Select how Blender works when you rotate the 3D View by default when holding MMB.

Turntable

Rotates the view keeping the horizon horizontal.

This behaves like a potter’s wheel or record player where you have two axes of rotation available, and the world seems to have a better definition of what is “Up” and “Down” in it.

The drawback to using the Turntable style is that you lose some flexibility when working with your objects. However, you gain the sense of “Up” and “Down” which can help if you are feeling disoriented.

Trackball

Is less restrictive, allowing any orientation.

Zoom Style

Choose your preferred style of zooming in and out with Ctrl-MMB

Scale: Scale zooming depends on where you first click in the view. To zoom out, hold Ctrl-MMB while dragging from the edge of the screen towards the center. To zoom in, hold Ctrl-MMB while dragging from the center of the screen towards the edge.
Continue: The Continue zooming option allows you to control the speed (and not the value) of zooming by moving away from the initial click point with Ctrl-MMB. Moving up from the initial click-point or to the right will zoom out, moving down or to the left will zoom in. The further away you move, the faster the zoom movement will be. The directions can be altered by the Vertical and Horizontal radio buttons and the Invert Zoom Direction option.
Dolly: Dolly zooming works similarly to Continue zooming except that zoom speed is constant.

Zoom Axis

The axis of the MMB to use for zooming.

Vertical: Moving up zooms out and moving down zooms in.
Horizontal: Moving left zooms in and moving right zooms out.

Invert Zoom Direction

Inverts the Zoom direction for Dolly and Continue zooming.

Invert Wheel Zoom Direction

Inverts the direction of the mouse wheel zoom.

View Navigation¶

Navigation Mode: The default navigation mode for Shift-F in the 3D View.

Walk¶

Reverse Mouse

Inverts the mouse’s Y movement.

Mouse Sensitivity

Speed factor for when looking around, high values mean faster mouse movement.

Teleport Duration

Interval of time warp when teleporting in navigation mode.

Walk Speed

Base speed for walking and flying.

Speed Factor

The multiplication factor for the speed boost.

Gravity

Simulates the effect of gravity when walking.

View Height: The distance from the ground floor to the camera when walking.
Jump Height: The maximum height of a jump.

Fly¶

There are no additional options for fly mode.

NDOF Device¶

Pan Sensitivity

The overall sensitivity for panning in the 3D View.

Orbit Sensitivity

The overall sensitivity for orbiting in the 3D View.

Deadzone

The threshold for the amount of movement needed from the device’s rest position for Blender to interrupt that movement.

Navigate Method

Navigation style for the viewport.

Free: Uses the full 6-degrees of freedom.
Orbit: Orbit about the view center.

Rotate Method

Rotation style for the viewport.

Turntable: Rotates the view keeping the horizon horizontal.
Trackball: Is less restrictive, allowing any orientation.

Keymap Editor¶

The Keymap editor lets you change the default Hotkeys. You can change keymaps for each of Blender’s editors.

Keymap Editor.

Keymap Presets: A list of predefined keymaps.

Select the keymap you want to change and click on the white arrows to open up the keymap tree.
Select which Input will control the function.
- Keyboard: Only hotkey or combo hotkey E, Shift-E.
- Mouse: Left/middle/right click. Can be combined with Alt, Shift, Ctrl, Cmd.
- NDOF: ToDo.
- Tweak: Click and drag. Can also be combined with the four previous keys.
- Text input: Use this function by entering a text.
- Timer: Used to control actions based on a time period. e.g. By default, Animation Step uses “Timer 0”, Smooth View uses “Timer 1”.
Change hotkeys as you want. Just click on the shortcut input and enter the new shortcut.

If you want to restore the default settings for a keymap, just click on the Restore button at the top right of this keymap.

Tip

Instead of deleting the default keymap to create yours, you can just add a new Preset for both the mouse and keyboard.

Export/Import Key Configuration¶

In some cases, you may need to save your configuration in an external file (e.g. if you need to install a new system or share your keymap configuration with the community). To do this, simply press the Export Key Configuration button found in the header. After doing so a the file browser will open to choose where to store the configuration. The Import Key Configuration button installs a keymap configuration that is on your computer but not in Blender.

The exported keymap will only contain keymaps and categories that have been modified by the user. In addition, add-ons may register keymaps to their respective functions, however, these keymaps are not exported unless changed by the user. This exported file may be thought of as a “keymap delta” instead of a full keymap export.