Opening and closing the Masks Panel

I've just been using escape (twice).

Many years ago I got into the habit of pressing the Enter/Return or Esc key to exit any tool or dialog box in any application. In most applications, including Lightroom Classic, this works.

If it’s the Masks panel, either key works: Press Enter/Return or Esc, and the Masks panel closes. If a sub-mask is selected, press the key twice: The first press deselects the selected sub-mask, and the second press closes the panel.

In short, I just hit the Esc key until the panel goes away.

If it’s a dialog box or value field, then:

To exit and apply the edit (like clicking an OK button), press Enter/Return. 

To exit and not apply the edit (like clicking a Cancel button), press Esc.

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@Scott-5x5 wrote:

Same for opening it to check on what masks I have already created.

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To open the Masks panel, press any of the mask creation shortcuts like the ones Rob covered, such as M.

It turns out that when the Masks panel is open, any of those shortcuts will close it.

So you could open it with M and close it with K if you wanted (in some cases this may need two key presses).

To “walk” up and down the mask list without touching the mouse, press Option/Alt-up arrow or Option/Alt-down arrow.

If it isn’t working, then a sub-mask is selected at a lower level; first press Option/Alt-left arrow to move up the hierarchy to the top level.

To change the selection from a mask to a sub-mask, press Option/Alt-right arrow to move down the hierarchy of the selected mask.

So it’s basically Option/Alt plus any arrow key to navigate the Masks panel hierarchy.

Shortly after posting this question I found a workaround answer for part of my question:

Pressing 'r' twice closes the masking panel (switches to the crop tool and then closes it, closing the masking panel as well. Works also with 'q', the spot tool.)

Still no solution for opening it.