Today’s Question: The choice to not require the Command key [Ctrl key on Windows] when assigning star ratings has disappeared in Preferences [in Adobe Bridge]. Is there a way to not have to press Command/Ctrl when assigning star ratings?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can indeed assign star ratings in Adobe Bridge using only the number keys (without Ctrl or Command). You just need to make the change in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog now rather than the Preferences dialog.
More Detail: For a number of years there was a checkbox in the Preferences dialog for Adobe Bridge that enabled you to disable the need to hold the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Macintosh) while pressing a number key to assign a star rating. With a recent update, however, that option has been removed but the same change can be made in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.
To get started, choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts dialog. In the search field at the bottom-left of the keyboard schematic enter “star” to filter the list of keyboard shortcuts to include those for star rating assignments, which will be listed as “1 Star”, “2 Star”, and so on.
In the Shortcut column of the keyboard shortcuts listing you can click on an existing keyboard shortcut and then click the “X” associated with it to remove it if you want. Regardless of whether or not you remove the existing keyboard shortcuts, you can then click in the empty area of the Shortcuts column (or to the right of the existing keyboard shortcuts if you’re keeping them) to add a new shortcut. You can then type the text (such as the number “1” for the one-star rating) to add the new keyboard shortcut.
After modifying the keyboard shortcuts for all five of the star ratings, go back to the search results and type “rating” to locate the “No Rating” command. You can then update the keyboard shortcut so you can use the “0” (zero) key to remove the star rating.
Once you’ve updated the keyboard shortcuts for star ratings (and made any other changes you might find helpful) you can click the OK button to close the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog. Note that there is also a “Save As” button toward the top-left of the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog you can use if you want to save a preset to preserve your keyboard shortcut configuration for Adobe Bridge.
