Is there a way to make a shortcut for aligning objects to your artboard?

[kphillips345]

Hi Adobeans,

I am looking for a way to assign a custom shortcut to, specifically, the Horizontal Align Center and Vertical Align Center commands in Illustrator CC 2015. I am a production artist and am constantly centering items in my page when I'm working with pre-created art, so this would be hugely helpful, instead of having to move my mouse up to the Align commands in the top of my toolbar and clicking both of those.

I managed to assign custom keystrokes to the correlating command in InDesign (Align to Page/Margins, etc.), but cannot seem to find a place to type in custom keystrokes for this in Illustrator. Is it just not a command you can assign shortcuts to? Or is there some workaround?

Thanks in advance!

[Kurt Gold · Accepted solution]

You can record an action and assign a shortcut to it.

[kphillips345]

Oh, perfect response. I never would have thought of that. Thank you!

[iBrads]

A simpler solution would be just to click the 'align centre' buttons in the 'Align Palette'. You must have the 'Align to art board' pre selected for it to align to the centre of your page.

[kphillips345]

I almost always have Align to Artboard option set, so the Action solution does work. I still have to manually click a button for it to do that action, but it would be nice if I could program Illustrator to do Align Vertical if I hit Command + 1, let's say for example, and Align Horizontal if I hit Command + 2, e.g. It's a shame I can't assign shortcuts to just anything I want, but I think I'll use the Actions workaround in the meantime.

It sounds lazy but even still, having to move my mouse over to the Align panel to click Align Center Vertically and Align Center Horizontally in succession is what I'm trying to avoid. I wish I knew how to write scripts!

[Kris Hunt]

Kurt, are you sure you can record an action that centers an object on the artboard? I've tried that before, and the action doesn't record the fact that I have the "Align to Artboard" option selected, so the action doesn't work.

[Kurt Gold]

Align to Artboard has to be on, otherwise the action fails, yes.

I thought that was obvious.

[Kris Hunt]

Align to Artboard has to be on, otherwise the action fails, yes.

I thought that was obvious.

And I thought it was obvious that I said I tried exactly that. For whatever reason, it didn't work then, but it is now. Strange.

[Plaintext]

One side note which turns out to be very useful.

If you work with consistent page or artboard sizes, consider using the Transform dialogue X and Y coordinates instead of using the align to center buttons.  One advantage: If you want to select everything and center it on the art board, you won't have to remember to group everything first. But also—scriptability in the Actions palette.

Happy straightening!

[JOMANI]

Idea for Adobe: Why not use the "alt" key as a toggle between the two? This is used in so many other places. Then you would just have to hold down "alt" prior to clicking one of the align buttons, and it would define weather it's align to object or artboard.

[VainMedia]

I came to this page trying to find a shortcut for exactly that -- toggling between aligning to artboard VS selection. Currently having to use the dropdown frequently for a project and getting tired of it.  +1

[obsessivetype]

Actions are not a good solution — too little flexibility in assigning a key combination.

I want to set the same keyboard shortcut that I've assigned to Photoshop and Sketch align tools, not F6 or whatever. Please add align controls to the keyboard shortcuts menu.

[obsessivetype]

Bump for visibility. (Adobe is clearly not reading their Feature Requests.)

Alignment is a key function in design. That it can't be mapped to a keyboard shortcut (without an action) is insane.

[Monika Gause]

obsessivetype  schrieb

Bump for visibility. (Adobe is clearly not reading their Feature Requests.)

Post it to http://illustrator.uservoice.com (and hope for many votes on the feature)

[kphillips345]

Since I asked this question, for anyone still reading, I did end up with a pretty feasible workaround that serves me well every day. I just assigned custom keyboard shortcuts to "Align to Page Vertically" and "Align to Page Horizontally." In my case they are kind of convoluted but I was running out of shortcuts to work with, so I did Cmd + Shift + 5 and Cmd + Shift + 6, respectively. Still wish Adobe had a built-in keystroke for this.

[judypwdy]

For anybody trying to figure this in 2024, I ended up just assigning Center horizonal to the number 8 and vertical to number 9. It doesn't cause me any problems (so far).

For anyone who isn't sure how to assign the keys, you just need to go to:

Edit> Keyboard Shortcuts.

• Then change the dropdown menu from Tools to Manu Commands.
• Then go to Object > Align and assign the action to whatever button.

When I want to align to my artboard I just hit 8 and 9 and that's it centered. Way faster workflow.