Quickbar
The quickbar is a user interface component for creating shortcut links to items, blueprints, blueprint books, deconstruction planners and upgrade planners. Once created they can be quickly selected at any time without needing to open the inventory. The quickbar is always visible at the bottom of the screen. It shows between one and four bars from a set of ten available, each containing 10 slots. Clicking any filled slot will place the chosen item in the player's hand if available in the inventory. It can also be configured to provide a ghost of any item the player is not currently carrying. The quickbar also allows blueprints and books to be pinned directly from the blueprint library, providing quick access to these blueprints without cluttering the inventory.
On the Nintendo Switch, this GUI is replaced by the quick panel.
A shortcut to items, not an inventory
The quickbar replaces the toolbelt found in previous versions of the game. The toolbelt also functioned as inventory space; the quickbar does not. It contains links to items regardless of whether they are in the player's inventory.
Ten quickbars available
In total the player has 10 different quickbars available for use, providing space to shortcut up to 100 different items. To see all the quickbars, the number against any visible bar can be clicked.
Basic Usage
Setting the number of visible quickbars
The game defaults to showing two quickbars. This can be changed to between one and four visible at a time, configured with the Active quickbars option in Settings->Interface.
There is no research connected to the quickbar; the player can access all quickbars from the beginning of the game.
What can be placed on a quickbar
- Any type of item, including modded items. Items can be added regardless of whether they are currently being carried.
- Any blueprint, blueprint book, deconstruction planner or upgrade planner in the player's inventory or the blueprint library.
Adding and removing items
- Clicking Left mouse button on an empty slot opens the item selection window, allowing the selection of the item to be linked in that slot.
- With an item in the hand, clicking Left mouse button or Middle mouse button on an empty slot creates a link to that item.
- Existing links can be removed by clicking Middle mouse button on the slot.
- On macOS the default binding is instead Command + Right mouse button.
- A slot must be cleared before a new item can be placed in it.
Accessing items
- Clicking Left mouse button on a filled slot will, when that item is carried in the inventory, place one stack in the hand.
- Clicking Right mouse button will place half a stack in the hand.
- If a slot is clicked while another item is in the hand, the held item will change to the newly clicked item.
- If a given item is not available in the inventory the game can optionally give an entity ghost. This feature can be enabled by selecting Pick ghost item if no items are available in Settings->Interface.
Inventory counts
Items that the player is carrying in their inventory will show a number underneath indicating the total amount carried. Items not present in the inventory will have no number and appear dimmed.
The exception to this rule is the artillery targeting remote, which will show you how many artillery turrets, that have shells, are in range of your current position.
Accessing multiple quickbars
With the mouse
Clicking on the number next to any visible quickbar will bring up a list of all 10 quickbars. Then clicking the number against any other bar will move it into the position originally selected.
With the keyboard
Three different methods are provided for manipulating the visible quickbars using the keyboard:
- Select quickbar shortcuts, defaulting to SHIFT + 1 through SHIFT + 0.
- Changes the top visible quickbar to the bar selected by the shortcut.
- Next active quickbar and Previous active quickbar shortcuts. Not bound by default.
- Next active quickbar will change the top quickbar to the next highest number. For example if bar 3 is in the top position it will change to bar 4. Bar 10 will change to bar 1.
- Previous active quickbar does the opposite; bar 3 would change to bar 2. Bar 1 will change to bar 10.
- Rotate active quickbars, defaulting to X.
- Rotates all the visible quickbars down to the next position. The bottom bar goes to the top. It does not change which quickbars are visible, only their relative positions.
Selecting quickbar items with the keyboard
In addition to using the mouse to click on an item slot it is also possible to use keyboard shortcuts. Combined with the Select quickbar shortcuts for accessing specific bars, this provides the ability to select any one of up to 100 different items with at most two successive keyboard shortcuts.
Two sets of 10 hotkeys are available: one set for accessing items on the top visible bar, the second set for the second visible bar.
Shortcut 1-10 (top bar)
- The keyboard shortcuts named Shortcut 1 to Shortcut 10 access the items on the top bar currently visible.
- The default bindings are 1 through 0 for items 1 to 10 respectively.
Secondary Shortcut 1-10 (second bar)
- The keyboard shortcuts named Secondary Shortcut 1 to Secondary Shortcut 10 access the items on the second bar currently visible.
- These are not bound by default. An example binding could be CTRL + 1 through CTRL + 0.
Blueprints, blueprint books and planners on the quickbar
It is possible to pin blueprints, blueprint books, deconstruction planners and upgrade planners to any quickbar slot.
From the inventory
Any blueprint, blueprint book or planner currently in the inventory can be pinned to a quickbar slot. If the item in question is deleted or destroyed, the quickbar link for it will be automatically removed. If the item is removed from the inventory, for example by being placed in a chest, the quickbar link will remain but will not function until the blueprint or planner returns to the player's inventory.
Right mouse button on a quickbar slot containing a blueprint, blueprint book or planner will open that item's edit window.
Direct from the blueprint library
It is also possible to pin blueprints and blueprint books directly from the blueprint library. These appear differently to blueprints pinned from the player's inventory - they have a darker background and no dotted border. There is no visual distinction between a blueprint book and a blueprint unless the tooltip is viewed.
The advantage of pinning from the library is that it provides permanent and quick access to the blueprints in question without the player needing to keep copies in their inventory. This saves inventory space for other purposes.
Clicking with Right mouse button on the quickbar link for a library blueprint or book will directly access the library copy. This can usually be noticed as the blueprint library UI will also appear in the background, behind the UI for the blueprint or book itself. The player should be careful when accessing library blueprints in this way - clicking the delete button will permanently remove them from the library!
History
- 0.17.0:
- Introduced