Photoshop: How am I supposed to change the keyboard shortcut for "Select Next/Previous Layer"?

Question

According to Photoshop keyboard shortcuts page, the shortcut for "Select next layer down/up" is ALT+[ or ALT+] meaning it hasn't even been set up yet since the [ or ] defines the user changing it themselves manually. But when going to the actual keyboard shortcuts dialog menu in Photoshop, nowhere is the "Select next layer down/up" to be found. So how am I supposed to manually change it?

Regardless, does anyone know how I can manually change the shortcut for the Select Next/Previous Layer?

Answer 1

To my knowledge there's no direct way to change these hotkeys. There're several predefined hotkeys like that that can't be changed (selecting channels, setting blending modes, etc). For a veeery long time there're topics on the photoshop feedback forum for changing the way hotkeys work but for the moment we have what we have.

Some workarounds:

• you can record an Action for both Select Front/Backward Layer functions and assign them to F-keys;
• you can record both functions as scripts using a ScriptListener plugin: scripts can be then assigned to Ctrl/Cmd+Key combos in Edit Shortcuts window;
• you can use a third party app to remap your keys: for example AHK for windows (free) or Keyboard Maestro for Mac (paid) — this way you can assign any key to be Opt+[/]

Answer 2

Currently, there is no way to do this natively. Recording an action can be your best choice but it's limited to Function keys only with Ctrl and Shift separately and collectively or even Function key individually.

You can record the action of selection next or previous layer and bind within the range of following keyboard shortcuts -

F1 - F12

Ctrl + F1 - F12

Shift + F1 - F12

Ctrl + Shift + F1 - F12