totally different shortcuts all of a sudden

[DimitryMak]

so to increase exposure has always been + and - and now out of nowhere its to increase clarity? 

is there a way to reset the shortcuts to default? everytime i try to google this the only results that come up are how to reset the photo to default. 

LRC + Mac

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

The short answer is to click the name of the Basic panel option you want to assign to the -/+ keys. In this case, click the Exposure text. A message should appear confirming this change.

It happened because those shortcuts were never tied to a specific control, but switchable. The idea was that if you were editing with the keyboard alone, like in Full Screen Preview, you could cycle through the options without having to exit Full Screen Preview. So, what probably happened is that the key that advances to the next or previous option was accidentally pressed, or at some point the Clarity option text was unintentionally clicked.

The way it’s designed to work is like this:

• Press - or + to adjust whichever option is active for that shortcut. (You know about this part.) 
• To adjust a different option, press < or > to go to the previous or next Basic panel option. (You probably pressed one of those keys by mistake, and that cycled - / + to the next option.) 

[DimitryMak]

that fixed it! you LEGEND!!! appreciate you so much. 

[richardplondon]

I believe . (period) and . (comma) shortcuts will also move the keyboard focus up / down the various Basic panel sliders. 

[Conrad_C]

I believe . (period) and . (comma) shortcuts will also move the keyboard focus up / down the various Basic panel sliders. 

By @richardplondon

Yes, that’s right. I mentioned that in my last bullet, but this is a quirk that involves those shortcuts in many apps that use them.

What I mean is that many applications use certain pairs of keys as up/down increment keys. Two of those pairs are:

- (minus) and = (equals)

, (comma) and . (period)

But few people think of them that way. We usually press them based on their more memorable upper case versions:

– (looks like minus, but is really underline) and + (Plus sign)

< (less than) and > (greater than)

And that’s the weird part. We use the upper case versions as mnemonics for up/down, but we really press the key without adding Shift. And some apps are forgiving about that. In the screen shot below, Lightroom Classic tells you to press + / - , but you don’t actually have to add the  Shift key to get the + because Lightroom Classic recognizes either case for this shortcut.

Again, this is very common, not just in Lightroom Classic but also Photoshop, video editors, and so on. We all sort of accept that sometimes they’re not literally talking about the character you have to press the Shift key to get.

[richardplondon]

Sorry Conrad C, I somehow managed to miss your own mention of the period and comma shortcuts.

It's common to communicate (for example) the shortcut for cropping as 'R', not 'r'. In one sense this may seem wrong, in that to get 'R' would require the Shift key or else Caps Lock if we were typing text. But we don't have to do that here, and in any case Shift and Caps Lock have their own distinct functions regardless. But IMO mainly it's that we are not typing text: we are carrying out a command by pressing the key which has got an upper case 'R' printed on it, therefore that we naturally think of as the R key.