Keyboard basics
The single keys and chords that run Tundra, the cheat sheet on ?, how to rebind anything, and which Gmail keys are not bound so nothing surprises you.
Tundra has more than 150 keyboard actions, and you can rebind all of them except the calendar keys. You need about a dozen to triage a morning. This page covers those, where to find the rest, and the keys that behave differently from Gmail.
Two layers
Single keys work when the mail list or the reader has the keyboard: j, e, # and the rest. They never fire while you are typing in a field, so a stray e in a draft stays a letter. Chords with ⌘ work everywhere. On Windows and Linux, read Ctrl wherever this page says ⌘, and Alt wherever it says ⌥ (so ⌥D is Alt+D).
Every binding is one key or one chord. Tundra has no two-key sequences, so there is no g then i. Folders use ⌘⇧ and a number instead.
The keys for triage
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| j / k (or ↓ / ↑) | Next / previous email |
| e | Archive |
| # | Move to Trash |
| s | Star or unstar |
| h | Snooze |
| ! | Mark as spam |
| z | Undo the last action |
| r | Reply |
| ⇧R | Reply all |
| f | Forward |
| v | Selection mode (then e, #, h act on everything selected) |
| m / ⇧L | Move / label the selection |
| u or ⌘⇧U | Mark read or unread |
| / | Filter the mail list |
| ⌘F | Find in the open email |
z undoes the last action from the mail list, the reader and the docks. It does not reach into compose or selection mode, and in the calendar Z opens Time Travel instead. The Journal keeps a row for each action, so you can also undo something older from there (r on a Journal row).
Getting around
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| ⌘K | Command palette, and questions such as "when is my next meeting" |
| ⌘P | Quick Open: mail, people, events, notes, tasks and files |
| ⌥F | Full Search, with from:, OR, NOT and regular expressions |
| ⌘N | New email |
| ⌘↵ | Send (in compose) |
| ⌘⇧↵ | Send later (in compose) |
| ⌘⇧1 to ⌘⇧7 | Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash, Spam, Starred, All Mail |
| ⌥] / ⌥[ | Next / previous account |
| ⌘1 to ⌘8, ⌘9 | Switch to tab 1 to 8, or to the last tab |
| ⌘W / ⌘⇧T | Close tab / reopen the closed tab |
| ⌥D | Your day |
| ⌥S | Scratchpad |
| ⌥R | Rules |
| ⌘L | New agent chat (needs AI switched on and a model) |
| ⌘, | Settings |
| ? | Keyboard shortcuts |
The calendar has its own keys while it is open: D, W, M, Y and A for day, week, month, year and agenda, the full stop for today, J and K between events, + for a new event, and R, ⇧R, ⇧D for Going, Maybe and Not going.
The cheat sheet on ?
Press ? to see every shortcut. The sheet is drawn from your live bindings, so it always shows what your keys do today, including anything you changed. Rows that do not apply where you are right now are dimmed. The sheet also lists a handful of short recipes, such as "Clear out a sender who floods you" and "Triage a morning without touching the mouse", with the keys for each step.
Rebinding
Click Customize shortcuts… at the bottom of the cheat sheet, or open Settings → Shortcuts and choose Edit keybindings…. You can change a key in the editor or edit the JSON directly. Your bindings are saved in keybindings.json in your Tundra folder, so they survive updates. ⌘K, ⌘P and ⌘N are defaults like any other and can be moved.
About 70 actions ship without a key on purpose, including opening each dock. Almost all of them are in ⌘K: type a few letters of the name ("journal", "snippets") and press Enter. If you use one often, give it a key.
Calendar keys are fixed for now and cannot be rebound.
Coming from Gmail or Superhuman
A few keys that Gmail uses are not bound in Tundra. Pressing them does nothing, which can catch you out on the first day.
| You might press | In Tundra |
|---|---|
| c to compose | ⌘N |
| a to reply all | ⇧R |
| x to select | v (selection mode) |
| g then i, g then s | ⌘⇧1, ⌘⇧6 |
| / to search | ⌘P or ⌥F (/ filters the list you are looking at) |
u works as it does in Gmail: it marks the email read or unread. If your hands insist on the others, bind c, a or x yourself in the editor.
A morning with no mouse
Open the inbox with ⌘⇧1. Read with j and k. Press e for anything done, h for anything that can wait, # for anything that should not exist, and r where you owe a reply. Press ⌥D to see what is left for today. If you archive the wrong thing, press z.