Tutorial:Keyboard shortcuts

Factorio has a lot of keybinds, and players often miss some of the "quality of life" shortcuts that make work easier. The following are some tips relating to the less obvious shortcuts in Factorio.

Entity manipulation

• Factorio has copy and paste functionality for almost any entity that has settings. Shift + RMB will copy a entity's settings, and Shift + LMB will paste the settings to another entity. Holding down Shift + LMB and dragging will paste to multiple entities with a single stroke. This works for:
  • recipes for assembling machines, chemical plants, oil refineries and centrifuges
  • filters for filter inserters and requester chests
  • settings for circuit network connections and combinators ^[verify]
  • recipe requests. If a recipe is pasted on a requester chest, it will request the recipe's ingredients; the quantity requested depends on crafting speed and modules.

• Entities marked for deconstruction can be unmarked. With a deconstruction planner in hand, hold Shift + LMB and drag to select the entities to be unmarked.

• Electric poles can be disconnected with Shift + LMB.

• While "empty-handed," Ctrl + LMB grabs everything from a container without having to open it. For furnaces and assembling machines, this shortcut will grab all items in the output slot(s). For entities with no output slots but with other slots, this shortcut grabs all of the items; this includes fuel from boilers, and science packs from labs. When held down, Ctrl + LMB can gather items from multiple entities by dragging over them with a single stroke.

• With items in hand, Ctrl + LMB fills an entity's inventory or input slots with the held item. Dragging Ctrl + LMB over multiple entities can be used to fill them with a single motion. For example, you can grab some fuel, hold Ctrl + LMB and drag over furnaces or burner devices to refuel several of them in one stroke.

• Smart electric pole placement is activated by keeping LMB held down after placing an electric pole and simultaneously moving in any direction to continue placing poles. While LMB is held, poles will be automatically placed when they reach their maximum wire reach distance. If there are unpowered entities on the route, the poles will be placed "early" (before the maximum wire reach distance) to power those entities.

Inventory

• The pipette tool is used to quickly put an item in hand without searching through the inventory (similar to a "color picker" or "eyedropper" tool in a graphics program). To use it, hover over an entity and press Q. If the player's inventory contains that item, it will be placed in the cursor.

• To lock an inventory slot to only accept a certain item, use Shift + MMB (middle mouse button). If the slot is empty, a prompt will appear that allows any item to be selected. This works for slots in the player's toolbelt, car trunks, and cargo wagons. ^[more?]

Display

• In order to see entities' recipes, filters, and inventories at a glance, use Alt to turn on the detailed information view. The detailed information view will also show directional arrows over inserters that makes their orientation more obvious. ^[more?]

• Many systems in the game can be visualized with the customizable debug mode. This can display color coded rail blocks, current FPS/UPS, and many more informational overlays.