Hotkeys and profiles: driving PocketPhantom from the keyboard

The defaults

PocketPhantom ships with a small set of global shortcuts that work from any application:

• Ctrl + Shift + A — show or hide the interface.
• F8 — toggle screen-capture exclusion for the app's windows.

These are global: they fire whether or not PocketPhantom has focus, so you can trigger them without clicking away from what you are doing.

Rebinding a shortcut

1. Open Settings → Hotkeys.
2. Click the slot for the action you want to change.
3. Press the combination you want. It is captured live and saved immediately.
4. If the combination is already taken by another application, the slot will tell you and keep the old binding.

Pick combinations that other software is unlikely to claim. Anything with three modifiers is usually safe; plain function keys often are not.

Mouse buttons

Hotkey slots accept extra mouse buttons as well as keys. If your mouse has side buttons, you can bind capture or show/hide to one of them and drive PocketPhantom without touching the keyboard at all — useful when your hands are already on the mouse.

Stick to the extra buttons rather than left, right, or middle click, which the rest of Windows needs.

Profiles: switching whole sets at once

Hotkeys are grouped into profiles. Rather than rebinding slot by slot when your workflow changes, you build a profile once and switch to it in a click.

Typical use:

• A study profile with capture and chat on easy-to-reach keys.
• A presenting profile that keeps only show/hide bound, so nothing fires by accident.
• A minimal profile with almost everything unbound, for when another application needs the keys.

Create and switch profiles from the top of Settings → Hotkeys.

When a hotkey does not fire

• Another app claimed it first. Global shortcuts are first-come, first-served in Windows. Rebind to something less common.
• A game or full-screen app is in front. Some titles capture input exclusively and block global shortcuts entirely.
• The other app is running as administrator. A process at a higher integrity level will not pass input down. Restart it without administrator rights, or use a different binding.
• Mouse button not registering. Vendor software for gaming mice sometimes intercepts side buttons before Windows sees them — check its configuration tool.

Still stuck? Open a support ticket, or file one in-app from Settings → Tickets.

Frequently asked questions