Joshua Riggs shows worship leaders how to use ProPresenter hotkeys to jump between song sections instantly. Default hotkeys like A for Verse 1 and C for Chorus 1 appear as yellow boxes on imported songs. You can customize them through Command + Comma, Groups, Configure Key Mappings.
Every church is unique. Some churches have very structured worship, and they sing it exactly the way they practice it. Other churches are more free-flowing and more spontaneous. If you run ProPresenter at a church that is spontaneous in worship, this can be difficult because you might be a few seconds behind the worship team with the lyrics because you're not quite sure where the team is going to go. But whether you run ProPresenter for a church that is very structured or spontaneous, This ProPresenter tip will help you learn to navigate through the song quickly and accurately, even if the slides are not set up properly for you. What am I talking about? Hotkeys. Let me show you how it works. You may have noticed when you import a song from CCLI or Multitracks that these little yellow boxes show up in the first slide of each group section. These are your hotkeys. Let me show you how it works on the keyboard. If I put my hand on the home position of the keyboard with my index finger on the F key, my pinky lands on the A key, and that is Verse 1. Then you have Verse 2 for the S key, Verse 3, Verse 4, Verse 5, and Verse 6. You also have C for chorus or Chorus 1, X for chorus 2, and then chorus 3 for Z. Then you also have B for bridge or bridge 1, bridge 2, bridge 3. I is for intro. O is for outro. P is for pre-chorus. And T is for tag. So let me show you how this works in a live environment. With my left hand on the keyboard, if I know the worship team is going to the chorus, I can just type C and it will automatically jump to the chorus. If they go back to verse 1, A. Verse 2, S. If they go to the bridge, B. If they go to the tag, T. You can see how you could quickly jump between different sections of the song. One thing to note is that these hotkeys will always go to the first instance of that song. In this arrangement, I have multiple choruses. I have 4 choruses and 2 bridges. So if I type the C key, it will jump to the first chorus. If I type the B key, it will jump to the first bridge. That's helpful to know as you're navigating through the song this way. Hey, before we move on, I want to tell you about a free resource that's available in the description below. It's 12 best places you can find free media to use in ProPresenter every week. Well, I've looked all over the web and found the best places that you can find free media, and these are the top 12 places that I've found. So be sure to follow that link in the description and get that resource, 12 Best Places to Get Free Media for ProPresenter. Now let me show you how you can actually make changes to these hotkeys or create your own hotkeys altogether. So from here, I'm going to press Command+Comma. I'm going to go down to Groups and then Configure Key Mappings. I'm gonna move that out of the way. Notice under this Show tab we have Group, and you can see Verse and Verse 1 are both A. But if I come up here to Verse 1, if I change this, I can type and go to Q and then click away, and notice that that hotkey changes to Q up here. After you make changes, if you want to reset everything back to default, click the little gear and click Reset Key Mappings. Then click OK and everything will be set back to normal. Now one more thing I want to show you. If you right-click on a slide with an existing hotkey and you select Hotkey from the menu, you would think you could type in a character and change the hotkey. So if I type in Q and click OK, well, nothing happens. This is probably a little bit of a bug. Maybe it's a security feature, but the only way that you can change existing hotkeys is by going to the settings, Command-Comma, Groups, and then Configure Key Mappings. But if you want to add a hotkey to a new slide, just right-click on the slide that doesn't have a hotkey, Go to Hotkey and then type in the letter that you want to be the hotkey. Click OK. If that letter is already assigned to a hotkey, you'll need to replace that hotkey in order for it to be active. So now when I jump to C, that goes to the chorus, and Q will go to the background slide. Well, that's everything you need to know about hotkeys and how you can quickly jump between different segments of the song. As I mentioned, be sure to grab that free download in the description below. And if you will, please like and subscribe to this channel. Leave me a comment and let me know if you have any questions about this, or you can send me an email, Joshua at worshipresources.church. Well, this is the second video in our series, 5 Hacks That Every ProPresenter Volunteer Needs to Know. If you want to follow the other videos, you can find that here or maybe here. But be sure to like and subscribe to this channel so you don't miss any of the new content we provide. Well, thanks again for watching. Let's get better together for his glory.
