Half-finished messages sent by accident look careless. Shift+Enter lets you write a properly structured message, with line breaks and lists, before anyone sees it.
Step by step
- Click in the compose box, or press Ctrl+R to jump there.
- Type your first line.
- Press Shift+Enter to start a new line.
- Press Enter when you're ready to send.
Tips & troubleshooting
- For longer messages, press Ctrl+Shift+X to expand the compose box; then Ctrl+Enter sends.
- Shift+Enter works the same way in most chat apps.
Write longer messages in the expanded box
For anything more than a couple of lines, press Ctrl+Shift+X to expand the compose box. The behaviour of the keys reverses: Enter now starts a new line, and Ctrl+Enter sends. You also get a formatting toolbar for headings, bullet lists, numbered lists, tables and code. It is the safest place to draft an announcement, because a stray Enter can no longer send half of it.
Quick formatting as you type
- Type a hyphen and a space to start a bullet list. Shift+Enter adds the next bullet.
- Type 1. and a space to start a numbered list.
- Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U apply bold, italic and underline.
- Type three backticks to start a code block, which keeps spacing exactly as you enter it.
- Paste text with Ctrl+Shift+V to drop the formatting it had elsewhere.
If you send too early
With the compose box empty, press the Up Arrow to edit the message you just sent, fix it and press Enter. Or hover over the message and choose Edit or Delete from its menu. An edited message is marked as Edited, and anyone who had notifications on may already have seen the first version, so for sensitive messages draft in the expanded box.
One message or several?
Every message you send can trigger a notification. Five one-line messages buzz a colleague five times; one message with five lines buzzes once and is easier to read back later. Shift+Enter is what makes the single, well-laid-out message possible.
On a Mac the shortcut is Shift+Return.