Hotkeys

The hotkeys settings can be accessed by clicking on the little gear icon in the most top left corner in the main menu. Here, the player can customize many hotkeys, or select one of the many pre-set hotkey templates. Almost every key on the keyboard can be bound to something, with a very few exceptions. The exceptions usually have a set purpose in the game and thus are un-rebindable.

Unbindable keys
Several hotkeys have a set purpose, which cannot be changed. This results in them mostly being un-rebindable.


 * The following keys are completely unbindable: ESC, SHIFT (left and right), CTRL (left and right), MOUSE 1, MOUSE 2
 * The ALT key can only bound together with other keys, as a combo key. The ALTGR key is treated as the same key.
 * The WINDOWS KEY (left and right) (or COMMAND KEY on Apple keyboards) are unbindable, but they can be turned bindable in the advanced hotkey settings. These keys keep their default function, which is opening the start menu on the desctop. This is true even when the keys get bound ingame.
 * The PRINT KEY is fully bindable, but it also keeps its default function, which is to take screenshots.
 * The following keys are bindable on their own, but cannot be combined with ALT: PRINT KEY, TAB
 * All other standard keys are bindable.

Standard hotkeys
Standard hotkeys are active while playing a match. The player can change the hotkeys at any time, even during a match. There are hotkeys for abilities, items, unit actions, shop actions, chat, interface and control groups. In the advanced hotkeys, there are additional settings for unit actions, shop actions, interface and control groups, and the hotkeys for camera actions, saved camera positions and some hotkey setting options.

Hotkey templates
By default, the game uses the "Arrow (Default)" hotkey layout. The player can choose of a varity of pre-set hotkey templates, which can be found by clicking on "Reset hotkeys..." at the bottom left of the settings menu. Available templates are:

1 It is possible to apply legacy keys by ticking the box in the advanced hotkeys settings, without having to select it via the pre-set template. Legacy keys are applied to all units, not just heroes.

Upon activating a template, all hotkeys which are used in the template get unbound, if they were bound to something before already. Hotkeys can still freely be changed after having selected a template. When using legacy keys however, all hotkeys which are used in legacy keys are unbindable, until legacy keys are deactivated. This only includes hotkeys bound to items. Other hotkeys in the legacy key template can be re-bound freely.

Abilities


There are 6 ability slots which can be used. If one slot is empty and contains no ability, it is not visible in-game, and all abilities coming after it are moved together. For example, if a unit has an ability in slot 1 and 3, but no ability in slot 2, then the 2nd slot is not visible and the 3rd ability is moved next to the 1st ability, so that there is no gap. However, the slots are still bound according to the settings. Despite the 3rd slot being moved to remove the gap, its hotkey is still equal to whatever is set for the 3rd slot in the ability hotkey settings.

Heroes usually have 3 abilities in their first 3 slots, and their ultimate always in the 6 slot. This causes the ultimate spell to always use whatever hotkey is set for the 6th slot, despite the ultimate visually appearing in the 4th slot. This is why the hotkey of the 4th ability on non-hero units is not equal to the hotkey of ultimate abilities. The non-hero unit has 4 abilities in its 4 slots and has the 5th and 6th slot empty, so they are not displayed. If its 4th ability would be moved to the 6th slot, it would make visually no difference, but change its hotkey to what is set in the 6th slot.

By default, the ability hotkeys apply to every unit the player controls. It is possible though, to bind different hotkeys to heroes, couriers and other units by turning "Unit Specific Hotkeys" on. It is also possible to bind unique hotkeys for each hero, however, this is not possible for other units. Clicking on "Clear" after having given non-hero units, couriers or an individual hero unique settings, sets the hotkeys back to what the player set as default.

The player can chose between regular cast (select spell and then select target), or quickcast (select spell and automatically cast it where the cursor is). Autocast is by default ALT+ability hotkey. It is possible to turn chose between regular and quickcast for couriers, non-heroes and for each hero, just like how uniquie bindings are possible. If the player wishes to use regular and quickcast, or wants to use different autocast hotkeys, the "Enable Advanced Quickcast/Autocast Hotkeys" setting can be turned on, which allows setting different hotkeys for regular, quick- and autocast for each slot. This also works together with unit specific hotkeys. However, advanced quickcast/autocast hotkeys is not compatible with legacy hotkeys. Here, the player can only decide between regular or quickcast and autocast is always ALT+hotkey.

Notes:
 * Activating legacy keys will unbind every key used by legacy keys, when they were bound to other controls already.

Beside the ability hotkeys, there are a couple of other settings and hotkeys for abilities:

Items
Just like ability hotkeys, the item hotkeys are displayed in the same order as the item slots in the HUD.

Item hotkeys are divided into cast and quickcast. This hotkeys are shared by every unit under the control of the player.

Besides the item hotkeys, there are also some other generic, items related hotkeys.

Unit actions
These hotkeys are for generic unit commands like attacking, moving, stopping, etc.

Control groups
These keys are the assigment for unit groups. In order to bind units to a group, select the units and then press CTRL + group key. The group assigment will get saved on the Steam Cloud, so the player does not have to re-bind the same units always to the same group for each game over and over again. However, only the unit type gets saved, not the amount of unit.

Camera actions
These keys are for controlling the game camera.

Player actions
These hotkeys are for other things player can do ingame, like option scoreboard, pause the game etc.

Chat
These are the hotkeys for the ingame chat. Besides hotkeys, there also is a chat wheel function and pre-listed common phrases which the player can assign keys to as well. The chat wheel and this phrases are displayed in the ingame chat upon using.

Chat phrases & Chat wheel
The chat phrases menu allows player to bind certain set phrases to hotkeys. Upon pressing the hotkey, a phrase will be put in the chat for your team or for everyone, depending on what phrase it is.

By default, none of the phrases are bound to any key. The chat wheel is by default empty. The player has to select the phrases manually if the use of chat wheel is desired.

The set phrases are (these are unchangable):

Advanced settings
The advanced hotkeys settings can be found by clicking on ADVANCED>> at the bottom right corner of the standard hotkey setting window. Here, the player can set hotkeys for spectating/watching replays, for the stats dropdown menu in live games or replays, coaching hotkeys, more control group keys and set some other binding options. These hotkeys do not interfere with the standard hotkeys. While standard hotkeys are only active while actually playing a match, the advanced hotkeys are only active while spectating a live game or watching a replay.

Spectator & replay controls
This section covers camera movement, spectator menus and replay speed. When ticking the Mirror Hotkeys from Hero Panel box, the hotkeys for camera movement, pause, spectator chat and scoreboard will use the same hotkeys as their equivalents from the standard hotkeys settings.

Stats dropdown
These hotkeys are for the stats (hero level, last hits, networth, etc) dropdown and their sorting. These stat windows are all sortable after the following things:
 * From highest to lowest numbers
 * From highest to lowest numbers, but sorting in the teams
 * Sorted after player order: Blue->Teal->Purple->Yellow->Orange->Pink->Ocre->Light Blue->Green->Brown

Coaching
These are extra hotkeys enabled for coaches.

More control groups
In the advanced settings, the player can find more hotkey settings for control groups, incase the player needs more than 6 control groups. These additional groups function just like the previous ones.