Adjusting Text Spacing With Keyboard Shortcuts

Here’s a little productivity tip to try out: Give the Control panel a rest and use keyboard shortcuts to adjust text spacing. You can adjust leading, tracking, kerning, and baseline shift all from the keyboard. The amount each shortcut moves the text is controlled by the values set in your preferences, specifically in Units in Increments.

Note that these preferences are document-specific, so if you change any of them with a document open, the new values apply to that document only. Close all documents before changing the preference to have the new values apply to all new documents.

Leading Shortcuts (select a range of text)

Decrease leading: Option/Alt+Up Arrow

Increase leading: Option/Alt+Down Arrow

Baseline Shift Shortcuts

Decrease baseline shift: Option/Alt+Shift+Down Arrow

Increase baseline shift: Option/Alt+Shift+Up Arrow

Tracking Shortcuts (select a range of text)

Increase tracking: Option/Alt+Right Arrow

Decrease tracking: Option/Alt+Left Arrow

Kerning Shortcuts (put your cursor between two characters)

Increase kerning: Option/Alt+Right Arrow

Decrease kerning: Option/Alt+Left Arrow

Other shortcuts

Want bigger increments? Add the Command/Ctrl key to increase or decrease spacing by 5x your increment values.

Apply auto leading: Option+Shift+Command+A (Mac) or Alt+Shift+Ctrl+A (Windows)

There’s also a shortcut to reset all kerning and tracking in a selected range of text: Option+Command+Q (Mac) or Alt+Ctrl+Q (Windows). But on the Mac side, you may encounter a problem where this shortcut conflicts with the macOS shortcut for Quit and Keep Windows.