The keyboard shortcut to change focus to the editor doesn't work.

Maybe I am missing something, I was looking for a way to change focus to the editor pane and I saw the documentation at Use Keyboard Shortcuts to Navigate MATLAB, mentioning Ctrl+Shift+0, but it seems not to work on my machine (Windows 11).

Ctrl+0, the one to change focus to the command window works, and Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3 all work as well, but Ctrl+Shift+0 does not. I checked in case there was a global shortcut on Windows set to do something for Ctrl+Shift+0, but there is none; is it a known bug?

In case it adds something, because I read a similar question that mentioned upgrading from an older version of it, it was installed from scratch and there never was an older MATLAB version in the system.

[Steven Lord]

I just tried it on my Windows 11 machine with release R2025a and it worked to switch to the Editor. I note that the documentation page states that the shortcut will make an open tool the active tool (emphasis added.) Can you confirm you already had a document open in the Editor when you tried that keyboard shortcut?

Can you open the Keyboard Shortcut settings (the Settings icon in the Environment section of the Home tab of the toolstrip, under MATLAB expand Keyboard then click on Settings) and make sure that you haven't accidentally assigned that shortcut to another action? Type "Ctrl+Shift" in the search box and make sure that Ctrl+Shift+0 doesn't show up.

[Carlisle]

Yes, the Editor window is opened, I used "edit" in the Command Window to open it as instructed in class because it is not a window that is displayed by default.

I checked the shortcuts in Settings, they should all be in their default state, these are the ones for Ctrl+Shift:

I just tried restarting the laptop too, because before I was using MATLAB right after installing it, in case that influenced anything, but I still didn't get Ctrl+Shift+0 to get me to the Editor.

If it worked for you, the only thing I can think of that could be influencing it is the OS language; Windows is displayed in Spanish in this laptop, and some shortcuts are different than the ones one is used to in English in some apps. For example, in Word, Ctrl+S doesn't save the document, it triggers underlining, Ctrl+G is the one that saves when Word uses Spanish as its display language.

MATLAB uses the default English shortcuts, Ctrl+S saves, but other than that I don't know what could be the problem since no global shortcuts are set for Ctrl+Shift+0. I'll try to install MATLAB on an English OS tonight and see if that changes anything.

[Matt J]

I do find, in Windows 10, that I can bring the editor into a state where Ctrl+Shift+0 does not work. The steps are as follows:

(1) Open two mfiles File1.m and File 2.m with the editor docked.

(2) Undock File2.m

(3) Close File1.m

Now, try using Ctrl+Shift+0 to toggle focus to File2.m in the external editor window. I find that it does not work.

However, if I then manually bring File2.m into focus with the mouse (see also my answer below), I find that toggling with Ctrl+0 and Ctrl+Shft+0 work again.

Answer 1

[Matt J]

Try first dragging the editor window into focus manually with the mouse. Then, check if Ctrl+0 and Ctrl+Shift+0 toggles the editor in and out of focus.

Check also that you have only a single editor window open and that it is undocked. If you have another editor window open which happens to be docked, Ctrl+Shift+0 will not work.

Answer 2

[Carlisle]

I found the problem, but I have no idea how to fix it or how to overcome it.

It seems to be a bug and it depends on the keyboard layout distribution that is active rather than the OS language being displayed. I have reported it as such already, so I suppose I'll have to wait for a while.

If the keyboard layout is Spanish, Ctrl+Shift+0 won't activate the editor for whatever reason, making the US keyboard layout the active one allows the key combination to work. I checked both when Windows language is set to Spanish and when it is set to English, they both behaved the same.

But I can't simply choose to have US English as the active layout because the laptop I am using has a Spanish one and symbol keys don't match.

[Steven Lord]

Please report this issue to Technical Support directly using this link. If it's an issue that has been reported by other users in the past, they may be able to suggest a workaround. If not, they can escalate it to the development staff.

[Carlisle]

I had already, a couple of minutes before posting that answer, but it was for nothing.

I just saw a reply about it on my email stating "Unfortunately, we are unable to process your request due to U.S. export control laws and regulations", from Daman Arora at MathWorks Technical Support.

I am from Ireland, but I am now studying in Spain at UPM (the Polytechnic University of Madrid), neither of those countries is under any U.S. restriction provision; when I reported it I was at uni, so IP ranges ought to have been UPM's.

If anyone wants to report it again, go for it, I just have a course this semester that uses MATLAB for numerical analysis and I doubt I'll be using it afterwards.

It affects R2025b as well by the way, released a couple of days ago. I just updated my installation and I tried installing it anew not to have any lingering data from R2025a, same problem, Spanish (Spain) keyboard layout usage makes the shortcut not work.