Google-docs – A *faster* faster way to access Strikethrough on Google Docs

accessibilityformattinggoogle docskeyboard shortcuts

The keyboard shortcut for strike-through in the Google Docs web UI is AltShift5 (yes that is a five), and the toolbar doesn't have a strike-through button.

It's very awkward (I actually have to swivel my whole body slightly to press it, my hand and wrist just don't work that way, heh; also sometimes I have to wear a wrist brace on my left hand, which makes it even worse).

I use Chrome on Windows. I found A faster way to access Strikethrough on Google Docs when searching for other shortcuts, it got my hopes up (especially because the OP's use case is the same as mine)… but it wasn't what I was looking for:

  • The top answer just describes the aforementioned keyboard shortcut.
  • This answer has a userscript but it doesn't work any more.
  • This answer seems to point to the same script.
  • Everything there is over 10 years old, anyways, a lot has probably changed.

So, my question is, is there some way to make toggling (or even just setting) strike-through on highlighted text more convenient than the current tendinitis-inducing keyboard shortcut (preferably by keyboard rather than mouse, if possible)?

As far as I can tell, I can't modify keyboard shortcuts or customize the toolbar. But maybe there's a way to do that? Or some outside-the-box trick to accomplish something similar? Fwiw, I'm open to console- or script-based solutions, too, I do have Tampermonkey installed. I don't know, I poked around in the UI a bit but I don't really have any ideas.

Best Answer

Nowadays there is no an official way to customize the Google Docs shortcuts and toolbar. The only official extension mechanism for Google Docs is Google Apps Script but it doesn't offer custom keyboard shortcuts for Google Docs scripts, only for Google Sheets macros. For details about Google Apps Script to extend Google Docs see https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs.

One workaround is to use Google Apps Script to create a custom user interface (usually a sidebar is more convenient than a dialog) and use client-side JavaScript to catch keyboard shortcuts but that might not be worthy as changing the focus from the doc to the user dialog will make this slower, not faster.

Please send your feedback about Google Docs features directly to Google. For that you might click on the Google Docs Help menu and then on Help Docs Improve1.


You are right regarding that a lot have changed since A faster way to access Strikethrough on Google Docs was posted back in 2010. Now Google web apps are more complex and the code optimization tools used nowadays2 make harder to use user scripts because the element selectors, among other things, might change at any moment without any warning by Google.

NOTES:

1 : Funny think the option name to send feedback to Google have changed over the time but users could see the feedback sent over the years on Google Feedback.
2 : Looking at Chrome Developers Tools on Google Docs, some of the JavaScript code shows that Google Closure was used. From https://docs.google.com/static/document/client/js/3165254216-editor_sw_bin_editor_main.js

/*

 Copyright The Closure Library Authors.
 SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
*/

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