It is Easter time, and here is my Easter Gift in eclipse: Quick Access. If you are one of those developers who hate the mouse and want to do everything with your hands on the keyboard: this is definitely something for you. I admit that I had not noticed that feature, as it is buried behind menus. It is such a great functionality in eclipse (thanks for the hint, Teo!), but easily gets missed.

If I press CTRL-3 the first time, it comes up with this:

Quick Access for the first time

Well, that does not look exciting. But if I read the dialog, it tells me the categories: Previous Choices, Editors, Views, Perspectives, Menus, and so on. And that I can simply start typing:

Quick Access: debug

Now it gets interesting! It lists me everything for above categories matching my input! As I do not want to use my mouse at this time, I use my cursor keys to navigate through the list and hit ENTER. Wow! A fast (and quick!) access to everything.

A few usage examples:

• To open the Console View: CTRL-3, cons, ENTER
• Switching to the debug perspective: CTRL-3, perspectives d, ENTER
• Switching to main.c editor view: CTRL-3, editors m, ENTER
• Debug my project: CTRL-3, d, ENTER
• Open my Debug Configurations: CTRL-3, dc, ENTER

It remembers my previous choices. Once you have performed something, it will be even easier to access it the next time. And I just can enter initials of the action too:

Quick Access with initial letters

To show all matches, I press CTRL+3 in the dialog again.

OK, I mentioned that the functionality is hidden. And yes, its, and I have not noticed it for a long time. I find the Quick Access menu under Window > Navigation:

Quick Access Menu

Happy Quicking 🙂