Lightworks doesn't use a traditional menu bar. Commands live where you work - on context menus, panel menus, and the keyboard - and every command in the application is listed in one searchable place. This article is your map for finding a command when you don't know where it lives.
The command list: one place to search
The Keyboard Shortcuts panel (Settings menu) is more than a shortcut editor - it's the complete, searchable catalogue of every command, organised by category (Playback, Marks, Editing, Navigation, Effects, and so on). If you suspect Lightworks can do something, search for it there; you'll find the command, its description, and any key assigned to it. Create HTML report prints the whole catalogue (see Keyboard shortcuts reference).
Where menus live
- Right-click is the rule. Nearly everything has a context menu: clips in bins, segments on the timeline, cut points, fades, viewers, and panels. When in doubt, right-click the thing you want to change. Worth knowing about specifically:
- Right-clicking a timeline clip offers Link and Unlink, alongside activate/deactivate, delete and remove (see Selecting and moving material).
- Right-clicking black on the timeline offers Delete black segment and Delete gap across all tracks - two different operations (see Timeline tools and commands).
- Right-clicking a clip in a bin offers Reveal and Reveal proxies, which open the clip's media or its proxy media in your file browser. Each is greyed out when there is nothing on disk to show (see Reviewing source clips).
- Track commands live in the Track Options menu on each track header, and in the Tracks menu with the master track buttons above the headers. A track is renamed by typing over its label.
- Panel menus - most panels (mixer, Content Manager, viewers) have their own settings menu for options that belong to that panel.
- The timeline toolbar holds the editing tools and commands you use constantly - the Cut and Selection tools, marks, insert, replace, remove, delete, split, clean up, trim, and the behaviours (Clip Link and Snapping). The side menu holds search, new, voiceover, conform, render, and export.
- The Project Browser's Settings menu gathers application-wide settings (see Application preferences).
Command categories at a glance
| Category | What's in it | Covered in |
|---|---|---|
| Playback | Play, stop, speeds, preview, fullscreen | Viewers and playback |
| Navigation | Frame steps, jumping cuts, start/end | Sequences and timelines |
| Marks | Mark, unmark, segment marks | Reviewing source clips |
| Editing | Insert, replace, remove, delete, clipboard, tools | Basic editing |
| Trimming | Trim, slip, slide, join/unjoin | Trimming |
| Effects | Add, configure, keyframes, templates | Effects overview |
| Tracks | Enabling, monitoring, locking, keyframes, Track Sync | Sequences and timelines |
| Editing | Clip Link, Link / Unlink | Selecting and moving material |
Commands without keys
Many commands ship with no default key - they're available to assign when your workflow needs them, and usable from macros too (see Keyboard shortcuts reference). Browsing a category in the Keyboard Shortcuts panel is a genuinely good way to discover capabilities you didn't know existed.
Tip: When you find yourself repeating a right-click journey, look the command up in the Keyboard Shortcuts panel and give it a key - most context-menu actions are bindable commands.