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Per Berntsen
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 22, 2022
Answered

TranslatedStrings trouble

  • August 22, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 1570 views

I've been using a TranslatedStrings_Lr_en_US.txt file since February without any issues.

It sets the shortcut for the Masking panel to Shift + Z, and Redo to Ctrl + Shift + Z, instead of the awkward Ctrl + Y shortcut.

 

"$$$/AgDevelop/Menu/View/Mask/Key=Shift+Z"
"$$$/Application/Menu/Edit/RedoWin/Key=Ctrl+Shift+Z"

 

After installing version 11.5, both shortcuts stopped working.

By removing the first line, I was able to use the default shortcut, Shift + W, for Masking, which I can live with, but I would prefer Shift + Z.

Having to use Ctrl + Y for Redo is harder to live with.

Correct answer johnrellis

My shortcuts stopped working yesterday, out of the blue. So I tried changing z back to Z, didn't work.

I also tried the lines you posted above, didn't work either.

Both shortcuts now invoke Live Loupe.

 

So I tried this (with both z and Z), but still getting LiveLoupe.

"$$$/MultiMonitor/LiveLoupeShortcut/Win="
"$$$/AgLibrary/Menu/View/ToggleZoomView/Key="
"$$$/AgDevelop/Menu/View/DepthRange/Key="
"$$$/AgDevelop/Menu/View/Mask/Key=Shift+z"
"$$$/Application/Menu/Edit/RedoWin/Key=Ctrl+Shift+z"

 


Interesting. I poked around some more on both Win and Mac and found more evidence that Z and Shift Z are weird.  This reinforces my guess that Z is hardwired into some parts of LR and there's a race condition when the app starts about which part of the code gets assigned Z.

 

Shift Z on Win correctly toggles between Loupe - Live and Loupe - Normal. But Shift Z on Mac toggles between Loupe - Live and Loupe - Normal exactly once, and then it stops working until you restart LR.

 

But on neither Win nor Mac does Shift Z open the Secondary Display window, as Shift E (Loupe - Normal) does, even though the menu command Window > Secondary Display > Loupe - Live opens the window.

 

Maybe you'll have to give up on Z and use some other letter.  My recently released Any Shortcut plugin makes it much easier to assign shortcuts and see which shortcuts are currently being used.

3 replies

videojonas
Participant
April 28, 2025

v. 14.3 on windows

 

Please make it possible to remap the before/after key on European keyboards - or remap it for us.

 

Right now it is the backslash key, which is needs a modifier to be entered.

Earlier on, you could fix it with translatedstrings, but as of today it doesn't seem possible anymore.

 

And please make it just a single key without modifiers. It is an essential function and its tough to go without.

johnrellis
Genius
April 28, 2025

@videojonas: "Earlier on, you could fix it with translatedstrings, but as of today it doesn't seem possible anymore."

 

LR 14.3 changed the name of the files from, e.g., TranslatedStrings_de_DE.txt, to simply TranslatedStrings.txt. But you can continue to manually edit them, or you can use the Any Shortcut plugin.

Shining Star Studios
Participant
June 13, 2023

Not sure where to post this...

 

How is trans strings working now on the most recent LR versions?  I have been trying to get it to work in LrC (build 230410) and nothing seems to work.  I changed languages to verify that it worked and it did (I assigned purple a hot key of Ctrl+9).  When I switched back to the EN version, it does not work.  I have the folder and file in the correct place (...Lightroom/Resources/en and TranslatedStrings_Lr_en_US.txt).  I notice that ther is a META-INF folder and mimetype file in the other language folders in Resources.

 

What am I missing?

 

Here is the string "$$$/AgLibrary/Menu/Photo/Label/Toggle5Shortcut=Ctrl+9"

Shining Star Studios
Participant
June 13, 2023

Update to the above...

 

Restarting the comp seems to have solved the issue.  Perhaps Adobe needed to fully shut down in order for the strings to take effect.

 

Per Berntsen
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 23, 2022

Problem solved.

Changing uppercase Z to lowercase z fixed it.

johnrellis
Genius
August 31, 2022

"Changing uppercase Z to lowercase z fixed it."

 

TranslatedStrings is messy.  One of the warts is that capital letters are interpreted differently on Mac than on Windows.  Another example:  Open Catalog is assigned "Cmd+O" in TranslatedStrings rather than "Cmd+o". On Windows, that is interpreted as Ctrl O, but on Mac it is interpreted as Cmd Shift O.   It's clearly a typo, since the convention in TranslatedStrings is to use lowercase letters and since Cmd O is the conventional Mac shortcut for opening files.  But that mistake has been present in LR for so many years that is now considered "as designed".

Per Berntsen
Community Expert
Community Expert
September 2, 2022

John, I've been reading some of your recent posts on TranslatedStrings, and understand that it's far from perfect.

It seems that something changed in 11.5, since uppercase Z stopped working.