How to turn on, and customize PRIV keyboard shortcuts

Did you know that you can use the PRIV physical keyboard keys as shortcut keys while viewing your home screen?

Through a combination of short press and long press keyboard shortcuts you can create up to 52 keyboard shortcuts that can help you access just about anything on your device.

In other words, you can press a single key for one shortcut, or press and hold the same key for 1 to 2 seconds for a different shortcut 

Best of all, these shortcuts can be customized as you see fit and you can take advantage of the BlackBerry Launcher’s shortcuts. As a result, not only can you open apps, you can perform actions such as contacting a specific person, turning Wi-Fi on or off and much more.

For example, to compose an email, press C (instead of opening Hub), and tap the Compose button, or press W to call your voicemail.

Please note that turning on keyboard shortcuts will turn off the ability to perform a Device Search if you start typing while viewing your home screen which is the default settings.In order to use keyboard shortcuts you will need to turn this feature on using the steps below.

Since this is the case, to perform a Device Search if you turn on short-press keyboard shortcuts using the steps below, tap on the Device Search icon, or swipe up and to the left from the bottom of your display to use the Device Search swipe shortcut.

With that being said, if after trying out this feature you prefer the type and search feature instead, you can still take advantage of long-press shortcuts. Just repeat the steps below again and select Start a search after tapping Typing action.

1. While viewing the home screen tap the All apps icon (circled in red)
2. Tap the gear icon in the top right corner (circled in red)
3. Tap Typing Action
4. Tap Use a short-press keyboard shortcut
5. Tap Keyboard shortcuts

After completing these steps you will be shown the preloaded Short Press keyboard shortcuts that are listed below, as well as an empty list of Long Press keyboard shortcuts that you can setup as you see fit.

To add a new shortcut tap on your desired letter within Short Press, or Long Press followed by All Shortcuts or tap one of the suggestions.

If you tapped on a preloaded shortcut, tap Edit followed by All Shortcuts, or tap one of the suggestions.

If you tapped on All Shortcuts you will have the ability setup shortcuts, ranging from contacting specific people, or what I really like, triggering a specific feature of an app.

For example, after a recent update to Google™ Maps I set my X key as a short press shortcut to start the new Driving mode feature automatically. To see all of the available shortcuts review the listing at the end of this post 

To delete a shortcut, tap on the letter followed by tapping Delete.

In addition to the previously mentioned steps, you can also setup unassigned keys as shortcuts by pressing and holding the key you’d like to setup as a shortcut while viewing your home screen.

Now that you are familiar with shortcuts, set some up and let me know in the comments what your favorite shortcut is!

Note: Available shortcuts can differ depending on what apps you have installed on your PRIV.

To learn about PRIV by BlackBerry or troubleshoot an issue, there are several great options available to help. Visit http://blackberry.com/privsupport for access to product documentation, how-to demos, tips and tricks, YouTube videos, support forums, knowledge base articles, Twitter support, and contact information for your region.