The shortcut you want is probably taken, fixed, or missing.
Chrome ships a fixed set of shortcuts and will not let you change them. So the same five things — mute this tab, pin it, copy its address, close the other twenty, reopen the one you just shut — stay a trip to the mouse, dozens of times a day.
This binds any combination you choose to twenty-nine browser actions. Each rule carries its own list of sites, so the keys you want while reading documentation are not the keys you want while watching a video.
Free, no account. Version 1.2.3 · Chrome 116 and later · installs with no access to any website — check the permission list before you install it. Your settings export as a JSON file you keep, and import back.
Documentation · All 29 actions · FAQ · Changelog
Also from us: Highlight Reader — reads a page aloud and highlights the sentence it is on, without moving the text into a side panel. Free on the Chrome Web Store.
What it does
Twenty-nine built-in actions, each bindable to a combination you choose: new tab, close, reopen the last closed tab, duplicate, pin and unpin, mute and unmute, reload, hard reload, move between tabs, move a tab left or right, close other tabs, copy the current URL, new window, incognito window, back and forward, scroll to top or bottom, zoom, bookmark, or open a URL you specify.
Every rule carries its own site scope. Alt + M can mute
only on youtube.com and *.twitch.tv;
Alt + J can move to the next tab everywhere
except docs.google.com.
Per-site rules
A rule is either an allow list or a deny list. Write the bare hostname —
youtube.com already covers its subdomains, and the *. prefix
is accepted but means exactly the same thing. This exists because the shortcuts you
want while reading documentation are not the shortcuts you want while watching a video.
Five that almost nobody binds
Chrome has no shortcut at all for these. They are on this page, in full, right now — there is nothing to sign up for to read them.
- Copy the current URL. The one people reach for the mouse for most often. Chrome has no key for it: you click the address bar, select, copy.
- Close the other tabs. Twenty open, one you care about. There is a menu item for it and no key.
- Mute this tab. A right-click and a menu, every time something starts talking.
- Pin and unpin. Same story: a menu, never a key.
- Open a URL you name. This one has no Chrome equivalent at all — it turns a key into a jump to the page you open twenty times a day.
All five are in the twenty-nine actions above. Bind them in the options page, scope them to the sites you want, export the lot as a file.
We store the address and the date, nothing else. It is used for one thing: when we ship something that removes one of these from your list, we send one short note about it. No schedule, no digest. Reply with the word stop and you are off, same day.
Your settings are a file you own
Export writes a JSON file named for the day you exported it —
keyboard-shortcuts-2026-08-30.json — and import reads one back, either
replacing what you have or merging into it. This is here because the most common
complaint about the extension we set out to replace was that an update wiped
everyone's settings with no way to get them back.
An automatic local snapshot of your previous settings is also kept in your own browser, so an import you did not mean to do can be undone.
Permissions, and why each one is there
| Permission | When | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
storage | At install | Saving your shortcut list in your own browser profile. |
scripting | At install | Registering the key listener on pages, once you have granted page access. |
tabs, sessions, bookmarks |
Only if you bind an action that needs it | Reopening a closed tab, bookmarking, and similar actions cannot be performed without them. Bind nothing that needs them and they are never requested. |
| Access to websites | Only when you turn on page-level shortcuts | Key presses can only be detected on a page by code running on that page. Revoke it and the content script is unregistered immediately. |
What it stores, and what it does not
Stored, in your browser: the key combinations you record, which action each one runs, any per-site rules, and whether shortcuts are enabled.
Never collected: browsing history, page content, personal information, analytics, crash reports, advertising identifiers. There is one narrow exception, and it is worth stating plainly: if you bind the "copy current URL" or "bookmark this page" action, the current tab's URL is used at that moment to carry out the action you asked for. It is not stored and not transmitted.
Full detail: privacy policy.
Status
Version 1.2.3 is live on the Chrome Web Store. The first version went up there on 31 August 2026, and we have packaged 6 versions counting that one; what changed in each, including the data-loss bugs we found and fixed, is written out version by version rather than summarised here.
Release history: changelog.
If you also get read to, and lose your place
Most read-aloud extensions moved the reading into a side panel, and the highlight that showed you where you were went with it. Highlight Reader keeps it on the page, where the text actually is, so your eyes and ears stay in the same place. It is on the Chrome Web Store, free, and installs the same way this one does. Same constraints as this one: no account, no backend of ours. One honest difference: if you pick one of Chrome's network voices, Chrome sends the page text to that voice's provider, and the page and the privacy policy say so. There is also a paid add-on that is not finished — half of it is written but switched off, and the other half has no supplier; that page says plainly what exists today, what does not, and what is free.
Documentation
Written from the source, not from memory — if the extension and these pages disagree, the extension is right and the page is a bug.
- Overview — the shape of a shortcut, and three things it deliberately does not do
- Actions — all 29, and which three need a permission
- Site rules — how patterns match, with worked examples
- Export and import — file format, merge, and undo
- Permissions — what is asked, when, and what revoking does
- FAQ — typing conflicts, IME, keyboard layouts, syncing