5 Most Useful Eclipse Shortcuts for Developers

Eclipse Interactive Development Environment, or Eclipse IDE for short, is an open source development tool that lets you manage your source files, compile, run, test, and perform many different operations to build the projects based in Java or any other languages. Eclipse IDE is the most widely used development tool among Java developers. Eclipse IDE was originally developed by IBM and later made into an Open Source Tool.

What are Eclipse Shortcuts ? And why you should use shortcuts ?

Eclipse Shortcuts are the set of keyboard key combinations when used together will help to quickly access elcipse features such as "Opening a file", "Adding comments in code blocks", "Searching a text in a file".. etc. Why you should use eclipse shorcuts ? because it saves time!. If you use one functionality repeatedly, at the end of the day you can save 15–20 minutes only with replacing the mouse clicks with shortcuts.
If you are not aware what Eclipse is, Eclipse is an Integrated development environment developed by Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse is widely used for software programming. More details about eclipse IDE and versions can found at Eclipse Foundation official site

How to Download and Install Eclipse ?

All you need to do is well documented here! follow the below links and get eclipse installed real quick

Eclipse Shortcuts and Cheat Sheat

Once eclipse installation is complete, you can try these eclipse keyboard shortcuts for quicker development.

If you are familiar with eclipse you can skip rest of the article and directly download the eclipse shortcuts cheat sheat.

You can download the eclipse shortcuts cheat sheet PDF or Excel from here. eclipse-shortcuts.pdf eclipse-shortcuts.xlsx

There are few tens of eclipse shorcuts available for developers. Based on function / usage we can group these shortcuts as below.

#1 Eclipse Shortcuts to Perform File Operations

If you are working with new class / file, it would be easier to use eclipse shorcuts to create file, edit, save changes without having to use eclipse navigation menu. Here are the few eclipse shortcuts related to file operations. These are the most useful keybord shortcut of all. Basically, these shorcuts lets you perform file operations at easy. Try it on your Eclipse and see.

• Ctrl + N : To create new project / file class / interface /
• Alt + F + . : To open file
• Ctrl + Shift + R : To open any project file
• Ctrl + S : To save file
• Ctrl + Shift + S : To save all files
• Ctrl + W OR Ctrl + F4 : To close current file
• Ctrl + Shift + W : To close all files

#2 Eclipse Shortcuts to Navigate, Search and Edit Source Code

If you are writing or editing source code, Here are the few eclipse shortcuts related to code search, edit operations. Below are the most useful keybord shortcut of all. Basically, these shorcuts lets you quickly edit/search/ source code at easy. Try it on your Eclipse and see.

• F2 : Shows Java Doc for the selected element
• Alt + , : Jump to previous error or warning
• Ctrl + . : Jump to next error or warning
• Ctrl + D : Delete a line at current cursor position
• Ctrl + Space : Open Content Assistance Dialog box
• Ctrl+ Shift +C Toggle comment on selected lines
• Ctrl+ Shift +/ Add Block Comment
• Ctrl+ Shift +\ Remove Block Comment

#3 Eclipse Shortcuts to Build, Run and Debug your code

To Build, Run and Debug your code here are the most useful keybord shortcut of all. Basically, these shorcuts lets you quickly build, run and debug your programmes at easy. Try it on your Eclipse and see.

• Alt + B : Build all projects in the workspace
• Ctrl + F11 : Run last application launched
• F11 : Debug Last application Launched
• F5 : Step into - in debug mode
• F6 : Step over - in debug mode
• F7 : Step return - in debug mode
• F8 : Execute till the next breakpoint
• Ctrl+ Shift + I Inspect an element in debug mode

#4 Eclipse Shortcuts for TEAM SVN Subversion

Here are the most useful SVN shortcuts. These shorcuts lets you Synchronize, commit, update, merge and perform all SVN related operations at easy.

• Ctrl + Alt + S : Synchronize with SVN repository
• Ctrl + Alt + C : Commit Source code to SVN repository
• Ctrl + Alt + U : Update Source code from SVN repository
• Ctrl + Alt + D : Update Source code to SVN Revision
• Ctrl + Alt + E : Merge Source code to SVN repository
• Ctrl + Alt + T : Show Properties