The habit
You learned Illustrator from a cheat sheet taped to the monitor, then from muscle memory that the sheet got wrong after a version change. Photoshop's tool hints live in the options bar, one sentence, easy to miss. Affinity shows a hint line that you stop reading once the keys are in your hand. The web apps put a question mark in the corner that opens a modal and steals the keystrokes you were about to use.
Modifiers are the part cheat sheets botch. Ctrl-S is save when Ctrl is down. It is not a tool. The moment you hold Ctrl, Shift, or Alt, the interesting commands change. A strip that keeps showing "P pen" while Ctrl is held is showing you the keys you are not about to press. The strip has to change with the hand, then change back when you let go.
The constraint
One window, one canvas, keys that differ by persona. The hint cannot be a floating palette you dock, because a docked palette becomes one more layout to save and lose. It sits along the bottom. It has to stay out of the document. Reading it must not take keyboard focus, must not fire a command, and must not type into the text object you are editing.
Two rows fit the model the app already has. The upper row follows the current tool or the current edit. The lower row shows letter keys. Letter keys are how you pick tools: V, P, R, T, B. Modified keys are how you run commands: save, undo, group, free transform. Holding Ctrl, Shift, Alt, or a combination replaces the view with the commands that match that hold. Release, and the tool hints return. If the strip showed both worlds at once it would be the cheat sheet again, too small to read.
Text fields, menus, and drawing gestures need their own context. A HUD that advertises Ctrl+S while you are naming a layer is fine as information. A HUD that swallows the S and saves is a bug. The strip uses the same shortcut routing as the app. Focus decides who owns the key. The HUD does not become a second listener that races the canvas.
Ctrl+/ toggles it because slash is not a tool key. View → Shortcut HUD is the same toggle for the mouse. F1 stays the complete list. The strip is the local hint. F1 is the book. Config can control shortcut hints with the rest of the UI preferences, stored under ~/.config/omadesign.
Personas change the upper row because they change the tool. Design's pen hints are not Pixel's brush hints. Photo and Motion get their own context. The document does not change when the hint changes.
What landed
The Shortcut HUD sits along the bottom of the window. This is the behavior in 0.5.8, written up in the manual's first pages and in the shortcut table. It came in with the "little keys" pass and has been part of the studio since. 0.5.8 did not remove it and did not replace it with a modal.
The upper row follows the current tool or edit. Pick the pen and the path controls follow: angle constraints, handle controls, finishing the path. Pick Move and the select, scale, rotate, and clone hints follow. The lower row shows letter keys, the plain presses that choose tools.
Hold Ctrl, Shift, Alt, or a combination. The strip shows the matching commands, and the gestures you are holding light up. Command keycaps stay compact. With Ctrl held, S · Save appears under the Ctrl heading. Let go. The normal tool hints return. The routing is the app's routing. What you see is what that modifier will do in this focus, not a generic poster of every chord in the binary.
Text editing and menus get their own context. A focused field does not treat the strip as a place to type. Drawing gestures keep their hints. Reading the strip does not steal focus and does not trigger a command.
Ctrl+/ or View → Shortcut HUD shows or hides the strip. F1 opens the complete shortcut list. The keys block in the manual is that list in short form: tools, undo, group, compound, free transform, guides, snapping, zoom, and the Motion pair Space and K.
The strip stays a constant height while those modifier views swap. A drag in progress does not jump because you held Shift to constrain it. Overflow at small window sizes is the + more hover, which is the next decision over. Here the decision is the two rows and the modifier swap. Hold a modifier. Read the row. Release. Draw. The command you read is the command the key runs. The act of reading did not run it.
In the hand
Open any document in Design.
omadesign
Press P. Look at the bottom edge. The upper row is the pen. The lower row still offers the letter keys, so V and T are visible as ways out. Draw a point. Hold Shift. The row switches to the 45-degree constraint and the other Shift commands that apply. Place the point. Release Shift. The pen's normal hints are back. The path did not end because the HUD updated.
Hold Ctrl. Read S · Save under the Ctrl heading. Release Ctrl without pressing S. The document does not save from the act of looking. Press Ctrl+S when you actually want the write.
Hold Alt and drag a selected object with V if you want the clone the hint describes. The HUD lights the Alt gesture while you hold it. Release. The hint returns to the tool row.
Ctrl+/
The strip hides. Draw again. The keys still work. P is still the pen. Toggle once more with Ctrl+/, or with View → Shortcut HUD. The strip returns on the bottom edge, same two-row layout.
Press F1 when you need the chord that the strip is not showing, group or compound or the photo adjustment copy. Close that list. Focus is back on the work. The HUD did not keep the key.
Click into a text object with T and type. The HUD's context becomes the text edit. Characters you type go into the text. They do not activate the letter-key tool row underneath the caret. Switch to Pixel and press B. The upper row follows the brush. The .oma stays the .oma.
The edge
The HUD will not take keyboard focus. It will not run a shortcut because you hovered a hint or because the row redrew. Hints are information. The canvas, the text object, the menu, or the field keeps the keys.
It will not list the entire shortcut table in the bottom strip. F1 is the complete list. + more is the overflow for a short window, not a second manual. If you need every export chord and every Photo batch chord, open F1.
Hiding the strip does not disable the shortcuts. Ctrl+/ is a view toggle. Ctrl+Z still undoes. Ctrl+G still groups. People who already know the keys can put the strip away. People who do not can bring it back without opening a browser.
The row you see while Ctrl is held is the Ctrl command set for this focus. It is not a preview of a different app's cheat sheet. Illustrator's M for rectangle is not going to appear there. Rectangle in this studio is R, and the lower row is where that letter lives when no modifier is held.
Press P, then hold Shift, and read the upper row before you place the point. Release. Ctrl+/ puts the strip away when you want the bottom edge back.
The thread
Part 17 of 144 in the Omadesign 0.5.8 feature thread.