P: Ability to reassign Timeline Playback Shortcut

[pratik jaiswal]

When working with video timeline  I am painting and panning the canvas with the space bar key. But when I press spacebar and not pan it starts to play the timeline and the play head moves to the next layer which is very annoying. This problem was reported a long time ago but the problem is not fixed yet. There whould be a way to disable the shortcut key for the play button in the video timeline. Else the video time line is a feature of no use for animation artists trying to create animations in Photoshop. Just cant work with this. Please fix the problem. Its been really long since this bug got fixed.

[williamf68583084]

Dear Abby,

Pressing the spacebar while creating frame animations in Photoshop causes the animation to start playing. The spacebar is one of the most frequently used keys in Photoshop for navigation purposes so having it also perform this other function is annoying as balls. Can we please get a way to change that function or disable it altogether? And yes I already know you can go to Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts>Panel Menus to adjust the timeline hotkeys, but this one in particular isn't there.

Thanks,

Sleepless in Seattle.

[David Mohr]

Howdy William,

Okay, well, I won't suggest customizing the keyboard shortbut...but I'll add this as a feature request and thank you for your elloquent user workflow scenario!  8-)

Hoping Seattle gets a little sleepier,
David

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

We had been facing this issuse since years. Check this page- https://forums.adobe.com/message/11063113#11063113
Just wondering how many decades more will it take for the fix. Its really ridiculous ....its a problem with your design and Adobe team really dosent seem to care. I dont need the problem fixed anymore...Coz i switched to blender....I just came to check if Adobe team still sucks the same till date.... Im happy to use blender coz I can chat with the blender developers live every few months and they respond with very quick updates too. Adobe on other hand just cares abt making money.

[pratik jaiswal]

Please fix this problem as I had been waiting a long time for it be rectified. This is a very powerful feature in Photoshop but unfortunately not usable for this very small issue that many are facing. I hope it will be fixed at the earliest.

[Prolixite]

Please fix asap, simple and necessary.

[Nicolas Ménard]

Could we have any answer or clarity on this? Makes the whole timeline workflow unworkable.

[Monokrohm]

I use spacebar quite a bit so having it activate the timeline playback is pretty inconvenient

[defaultqeqjd0g3di7h]

If they wont fix it, is there a plug-in that anyone knows of that could assist? This is infuriating. Makes using this to animate nearly impossible.

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, I found this tip by Pete Green: 

"Double-click the Timeline panel tab which will minimize the timeline tab. From there you can use Space to toggle the move tool.
Double-click the timeline panel tab again to bring it back up and the video shortcuts should work again."

[PECourtejoie]

Another thing: what about slightly readjusting one's habits and get benefits?

I tried the trick I just shared, but I also noticed that the spacebar does trigger a play if you just briefly hit it...

BUT, if I make a long press on the spacebar, I do get the hand tool that lets me pan in my image...

Another solution would be to use the H key to trigger the hand tool, giving you also a temporary way to navigate in your image, plus the "birds eyes view" that lets you pan in your image like in the navigator panel...

[PatrickDosi]

Hello there,

I tried to make a frame animation, but I noticed really early that there is one problem. When I want to pan around my work, I press the Spacebar, but that also triggers the playbutton in the timeline and my animation starts playing, which is really distracting and annoying. So I have to pause the animation and find the frame I was working on over and over... There is no way to turn this off, so I would really REALLY REALLY appreciate a way to somehow turn this off. This seems to be a problem to a lot of users since 2019, and some of them already reported this issue, but it still exists...

So yeah, TLDR: An option to...

-change the hotkey for the timeline playbutton and/or a checkmark to freeze the animation in the timeline settings.

-change the hotkey for the hand-panning.

Thanks in advance.

-Patrick

[Venox Walden]

I wonder why there is no way we could change the animation shortcut for Timeline (Frames)..

This is causing me so much trouble when I am editing the shape of the current frame, because I have to hold Space to move around the canvas and many times it plays the animation causing the timeline to move to a different frame than the one that I am editing.

I am using Latest Photoshop 2022 v23.1.0 on Windows 10.

[SwimyGreen]

This has been really bothersome for me as well. I'm used to doing quick pans with the spacebar held down and this happens to me once every 5 minutes on average when working on animations. This is really frustrating, please fix this. DX

[AldousMassie]

I'm wanting this feature too!

[AldousMassie]

It's literally been years, is there any response to this problem yet?

[AldousMassie]

PLEASE FIX THIS!

[sjminerv]

Another animator chiming in here. The spacebar to play and pause gets in the way ALL THE TIME. This needs to be a re-assignable short cut. PLEASE ADOBE

[artkonina]

PLEASE FIX THIS ADOBE! WHY ARE WE PAYING YOU SO MUCH MONEY FOR SUCH A MEDIOCRE PRODUCT AND ROCK BOTTOM SERVICE??? YOU CAN LITERALLY RE-BIND ANY OTHER KEY TO ANY OTHER ACTION, WHY IS THIS ONE SO DIFFICULT? If you can't, can we at least get an explanation that is not "we don't care you'll pay us anyway".

[mikescottiskiff]

LOOOL. Can't believe this isn't fixed yet! SO FRUSTRATING

[JarrodPrince]

FIX THIS

[PECourtejoie]

Patrick, in my experience, a short press does start play/stop, while a long press does give you the pan. Did you also try the Z key as an alternative?

Indeed, this discussion is one of the many that highlight the need to be able to customize hardwired KBSCs

[Kidmo25855776t3xb]

I'm surprised you don't know the seriousness of this problem.

[Nate24349426imfl]

You don't understand. This is a huge pain. NEEDS TO BE FIXED PLEASE.

[joel98689390]

Adobe? Is there any word on this?  With Battle Axe's Timelord and several other animation extensions making animation in PS more robust than ever for animators and motion graphics artists, it looks pretty silly that years later in 2023 your customers are still asking you to implement the smallest conceivable feature request.

[Mike Arens]

I came up with a fix that is working for me and you will kick yourself when you hear it. 

Keep your left mouse button pressed while you let go of space.*****

This will stop the timeline from keying up the playback.

Not a rebind fix, but this should answer how to stop it. You'll just have to relearn that your panning needs to end with your mouse button still pressed.

This could also explains why it has remained an issue to a degree. It's similare to the quick color picker toggle. It shares another shortcut input. Obviously, this should be fixed, but I can see why someone trying to recreate it doesn't have the same input issue. Other software follow a similar constaint mouse holding sequence to avoid input overlap. 

I hope this helps! Was driving me crazy...