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Keyboard Shortcuts

Bradley Brown edited this page Aug 13, 2026 · 1 revision

Keyboard Shortcuts

Every keyboard binding in the Fracturing Fog Avalonia shell.


Global (any fractal, any mode)

Key Action
M Toggle Floating Menu
T Toggle Color Theme Editor
R Reset view to default for the active fractal
V Save current view as a new region
Esc Exit Span mode / stop running slideshow / stop video zoom / close active sub-dialog

Overlays & Toggles (any fractal, any mode)

These single keys flip an on-screen overlay or open a companion window. They are ignored while a text box has focus (see Focus Behavior).

Key Action
G Toggle the coordinate grid overlay
K Toggle the watermark overlay
H Toggle the performance HUD (frame time, iteration budget, precision tier)
Shift + H Reset the performance HUD's rolling averages — do this before timing a fresh region or video capture
X Toggle the Post-FX HUD overlay (live brightness / contrast / adaptive readout)
P Open the Fractal Parameters dialog
F1 Open the Help window

Performance & Deep-Zoom Diagnostics

Advanced switches for tuning the Mandelbrot render path. The GPU toggle is an everyday speed control; the Ctrl + Shift combos are diagnostic — they turn off one accelerator at a time so you can tell which math stage is responsible for a visual artifact deep in a zoom. While a diagnostic is off, the window title gains a suffix such as [ACCEL OFF] or [SA OFF] so you never forget it is engaged.

Combo Action
Ctrl + G Toggle GPU compute for the single-precision Mandelbrot path. Falls back to CPU automatically on backends that cannot engage it; the Control Center checkbox stays in sync.
Ctrl + Shift + A Toggle Mandelbrot acceleration (perturbation / BLA fast path). Off = plain per-pixel iteration.
Ctrl + Shift + S Toggle Series Approximation — the polynomial skip that fast-forwards the first thousands of iterations near the reference orbit.
Ctrl + Shift + D Toggle double-double (DD) BLA precision on the bilinear-approximation step.

Tip

Chasing pixelation or smearing that only appears past a very deep zoom? Turn the accelerators off one at a time with the Ctrl + Shift combos and watch whether the artifact disappears. Whichever toggle "fixes" the image names the stage that needs attention. For the theory behind these stages see Deep-Zoom & Perturbation.

Note

Bare A and S are the WASD pan / zoom keys during 2-D and 3-D navigation, so the diagnostic toggles deliberately live on the Ctrl + Shift layer to stay out of their way.


2-D Navigation (Mandelbrot, Julia, Burning Ship, …)

Key Action
W Zoom in (centred)
S Zoom out (centred)
A Pan left
D Pan right
Q Pan up
E Pan down
Shift + W / Shift + S Quarter-step zoom in / out (fine)
Shift + pan key Quarter-step pan (precise nudge)

3-D Navigation (Mandelbulb, User Bulb 3D)

Key Action
W Move camera closer (distance −)
S Move camera farther (distance +)
Shift + W / Shift + S Quarter-step camera distance (fine)
A Pan left (screen-space)
D Pan right
Q Pan up
E Pan down
Tilt camera up (phi +)
Tilt camera down (phi −)
Orbit camera left (theta −)
Orbit camera right (theta +)
PgUp Light azimuth −
PgDn Light azimuth +
Home Light elevation −
End Light elevation +

Mouse — 2-D

Input Action
Wheel up Zoom in at cursor
Wheel down Zoom out at cursor
Left-click drag Pan (fast pass mid-drag; full re-render 300 ms after release)
Double-click Center on point + zoom in one step
Right-click drag Highlight-to-zoom — marquee box; release centers + zooms to fill rectangle

Mouse — 3-D

Input Action
Wheel up Zoom in (camera closer)
Wheel down Zoom out (camera farther)
Left-click drag Pan in screen space
Right-click drag X Orbit theta (azimuth)
Right-click drag Y Orbit phi (elevation, inverted for natural ""tilt up"" feel)

Focus Behavior

Keyboard pan / zoom / camera keys are ignored while any text box has keyboard focus (CX, CY, Zoom, Iter, the equation editor, the search box in the theme combo, …).

Clicking the render surface restores focus to the canvas — including after a toolbar click. (v0.6.2 fixed a regression where toolbar interaction permanently stole focus.)

If keystrokes feel ""dead,"" click the rendering area once before pressing them.


Slideshow VCR (mouse only)

The transport bar at the bottom of MainWindow exposes:

Button Action
◀◀ Previous region
Previous theme within region
▮▮ Pause / Resume
Next theme within region
▶▶ Next region

Visible only while the slideshow is running.


Sub-dialog Hotkeys

Color Theme Editor

Key Action
Ctrl+S Save to library
Ctrl+E Export JSON
Esc Close (cancels live preview if Live Preview is on)

User Equation / Sandbox / User Bulb editor

Key Action
Ctrl+S Save under current name
Ctrl+Shift+S Save As
F5 Force recompile
Esc Close

Floating Menu

Key Action
Esc Close (does not exit the program)
Enter (inside CX/CY/Zoom/Iter) Apply (same as Go button)

Floating Help

Key Action
Esc Close

Server Admin / Client dialog

Key Action
Esc Close

Right-Click Sort Menus

Combo Right-click options
Region (toolbar OR menu) Default · By Fractal Type → <type>
Theme (toolbar OR menu) Default · All A–Z · per-kind filter (Cycling / Phong3D / Pbr3D / …)

The selected sort persists until changed (per-shell, not on disk).


Modifier Combinations

Action Combo
Lock current region in slideshow Shift + click Slideshow button
Quarter-step pan Shift + pan key
Quarter-step zoom / 3-D distance Shift + W / Shift + S
Custom — TODO (none reserved)

Keyboard Shortcuts · Fracturing Fog v0.6.x · © 2026

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