Enable Timeline Shortcut Keys

My guess is that you’re all familiar with the “Enable Timeline Shortcut Keys” setting in the timeline’s fly-out menu. But what are the actual shortcut keys we’re enabling when we check this option?

Opening Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts… reveals nothing about these mysterious shortcut keys. They can’t be customised, that much is clear but what shortcut keys are enabled and what do they do? I did some searching in the good old Adobe archives and here is a list of what I found (my personal favourites are in bold, be sure to give them a try).

Action	Windows	Mac OS
Start timeline playback	Spacebar	Spacebar
Toggle between timecode and frame number notation	Alt + click the current-time display in the lower-left corner of the timeline.	Alt + click the current-time display in the lower-left corner of the timeline.
Expand / collapse layers	Alt + click on “drop-down triangles”	Alt + click on “drop-down triangles”
Snap an object (keyframe, the current time, layer in point, and so on) to the nearest object in timeline	Shift-drag	Shift-drag
Evenly distribute a selected group of multiple keyframes.	Alt-drag (first or last keyframe in the selection)	Alt-drag (first or last keyframe in the selection)

All following shortcut keys are for positioning the playhead on the timeline.
As I am used to dragging the actual playhead around, I was happy to discover an alternative and faster way by “grabbing” and “dragging” the time indicator in the lower left corner of the timeline panel. This proves to be a more efficient way to access the non-visible parts of the timeline.

Action	Windows	Mac OS
Increase playhead scrubbing speed	Shift-drag the current time.	Shift-drag the current time.
Decrease playhead scrubbing speed	Controll-drag the current time.	Command-drag the current time.
Move playhead back one frame	Left Arrow (or Page Up)	Left Arrow (or Page Up)
Move playhead forward one frame	Right Arrow (or Page Down)	Right Arrow (or Page Down)
Move playhead back ten frames	Shift + Left Arrow (or Shift + Page Up)	Shift + Left Arrow (or Shift Page Up)
Move playhead forward ten frames	Shift + Right Arrow (or Shift + Page Down)	Shift + Right Arrow (or Shift + Page Down)
Move playhead to In point of the current layer	Up Arrow	Up Arrow
Move playhead to the Out point of the current layer	Down Arrow	Down Arrow
Move playhead to the beginning of the timeline	Home	Home
Move playhead to the end of the timeline	End	End
Move playhead to the beginning of the work area	Shift + Home	Shift + Home
Move playhead to the end of the work area	Shift + End	Shift + End
Move playhead back one second	Shift + Up Arrow	Shift + Up Arrow
Move playhead forward one second	Shift + Down Arrow	Shift + Down Arrow
Move playhead to the next whole second in timeline	Shift + click the Next Frame button.	Shift + click the Next Frame button.
Move playhead to the previous whole second in timeline	Shift + click the Previous Frame button.	Shift + click the Previous Frame button.