The Keyboard-First Lyric Timing Workflow
The fastest way to time lyrics is to never reach for the mouse. Here's the one-pass, keyboard-only flow and the full shortcut reference behind it.
The one-pass loop
The whole workflow is a short loop you repeat once per line: press Space to
play, hit Enter the instant the next line starts, and let the track keep
rolling. Miss a line? Backspace undoes the last stamp without stopping the
music. Slightly early or late? [ and ] nudge the last line by
50 ms while playback continues.
Because you never stop the song, a three-minute track takes about three minutes to time. The moment you notice a line is off, you fix it in place and keep going.
Moving around without the mouse
Seek with the arrow keys: ← / → jump five seconds, and
Shift + ← / Shift + → step one second at a time for fine
positioning. To jump straight to a timed line, Ctrl/⌘ + ← and
Ctrl/⌘ + → move to the previous and next stamped line.
The full shortcut reference
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Play / pause | Space |
| Annotate next line | Enter |
| Set highlighted line to now | Ctrl/⌘ + Enter |
| Undo / redo | Backspace / Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + Z |
| Nudge last line −50 / +50 ms | [ / ] |
| Nudge highlighted line | Ctrl/⌘ + [ / ] |
| Delete last timestamp | Delete |
| Extend selection up / down | Shift + ↑ / ↓ |
| Clear selection | Esc |
Why keyboard-first wins
It's not just speed. Tapping a key has lower latency than clicking, so your stamps land closer to the true beat. And because the hand stays on the keyboard, undoing and redoing becomes reflexive, which means you experiment more freely. The result is a tighter sync with less effort. Every shortcut is also remappable through the app's settings if a key doesn't suit your setup.
Ready to try it? The step-by-step guide walks through the same flow with screenshots, and fixing out-of-sync lyrics covers what to do when a line lands wrong.
Time a song by keyboard
Open the app and try the one-pass loop on a track you know.