How to Customize Cursor Keyboard Shortcuts

Cursor ships with sensible defaults, but its AI commands sometimes collide with extension shortcuts you already use. The keyboard shortcuts editor lets you rebind anything, including the AI keys for inline edit and chat. This guide resolves a conflict and changes a binding.

What you need

• Cursor installed
• A shortcut you find awkward or that conflicts with an extension
• Two minutes

Step 1: Open the shortcuts editor

Open the command palette and run Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts. This opens a searchable table of every command and its current binding.

Step 2: Find the command

Search for the action you want to change. To rebind, double-click the row, press the new key combination, and Enter. If the keys are already used, Cursor warns you about the conflict so you can decide which command keeps them.

Step 3: Edit the JSON directly

For full control, open the keybindings.json file from the small page-and-pencil icon in the top right of the editor. Each entry is a key, a command, and an optional when clause that limits where it applies.

[
  {
    "key": "cmd+i",
    "command": "cursor.inlineEdit",
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+k",
    "command": "-cursor.inlineEdit"
  }
]

Step 4: Test the new binding

Close settings, open a file, and press your new key. If nothing happens, check the when clause; a binding only fires when its condition is true, like the editor having focus.

Result: inline edit now lives on a key that does not fight your other extensions, and the change persists in keybindings.json that you can sync or copy to another machine.