The currently installed theme on my operating system stretched the Tool Controls a lot, so I have barely any room for my drawing. As a solution, I'd like it if there were a shortcut key to just show or hide the Tool Controls, because I need it very often.

I can't google anything out about the shortcut key for it, so if there isn't one, can it be custom made?

Thank you.

You can hide it by going to View > Show/Hide > Toolbox.

Also you can adjust the icon sizes under Inkscape preferences (Shift + Ctrl + P) under Interface category.

No, i know i can i hide it using the menu. But the point was that i need it often, so going to the menu is kindof a hassle, that's why i want a shortcut key if there is one.
Icon sizes also have nothing to do with it, the icons aren't any bigger now than they normally are. The height of the whole bar itself is bigger than usual. The icons inside the bar are normal sized.

What i want is just to hit a shortcut key, change a value or two in the Tool Controls bar, then hit the shortcut key again to make it disappear.

I suggest you learn the shortcuts for each tool on the toolbox. I have enough screen space for all toolbars but still I'm almost exclusively using shortcuts and it's super fast. You can see the shortcuts when you hover over the icons, or under Help > Keys and mouse reference.

If you can't live without the toolbox use keyboard to quickly show it or hide it (Alt highlights the menu letters to choose to activate the menu.)

No! Not the toolbar. The tool controls bar! Like when you select a rectangle, the tool control bar contains its width, height, x and y positions etc.

Try using the Wide view (View > Wide), it will keep the tools controls bar up there but it will move the controls bar to the right. Does this help?

No, that's the Snap controls bar that goes to the right. I'm only having trouble with the Tool Controls bar.

Does any of this info help?
http://inkscape.org/doc/keys048.html#d0e603

It doesn't show/hide the tool control bar, but it does provide some very limited keyboard control. I don't think there is a shortcut to show/hide the control bar.

I've seen that, no help. Doesn't Inkscape provide a tool that would enable peeps to write their own shortcut? Usually, everything is customizable in Linux(es).

I don't know if you can create a keyboard shortcut where none already exists. But locate Inkscape/share/keys/default.xml. It contains instructions for mapping the shortcuts. And there might be something on Help menu > Keys and Mouse Reference, I can't remember for sure. I think the Linux key mapping is a separate system from the Inkscape key mapping, though. So maybe through Linux you could create a shortcut where none already exists??

It used to be that you could move the control bar around, along with the toolbox, snap and commands bar. I don't know why that functionality was removed?? But simply moving the control bar away from it's normal position might actually solve your problem. But I'd hate for you to lose all the new stuff introduced into Inkscape since then (by reinstalling the older version...I think that was 0.46 or maybe 0.47)(actually maybe as far back as 0.44 or 0.45).

It sounds as if you are on Linux, so this post may be of very little help to you. I too have the problem that I want some of the bars to be controlled by a key shortcut to show /hide them but as of now no keybinding exists for them. My solution is to use F11, which on Windows switches from fullscreen and back. In fullscreen mode all control bars are hidden, so in non-fullscreen mode you can have them all showing. This has helped my workflow quite a bit so if you can find a fullscreen shortcut in Linux it may also work for you.

Great idea druban! I think this might be the best solution so far.

I'm on linux and F11 switches to full screen but with the bars showing. Shift + F11 hides everything but the canvas (the window keeps its size). But you can also combine those two options, go full screen with F11 and then hide all the bars with Shift + F11 - the whole screen is canvas!

Excellent find prkos! This is great for wider drawing schemes (like if you want to move more freely with a pen and tablet), or if you have presentations you want to show to folks in a clean cut way. I love that shift + F11. Nice stuff!

holy moly, thanks druban and prkos, both those solutions are just great!

It seems that i can choose different things to show or hide in fullscreen versus normal mode, so i can change back and forth on those two. If I'd noticed that before, there would be no need for this thread

The next version of Inkscape will have at least menu accels for all entries in 'View > Show/Hide':
in development builds, toggling the tool controls bar can be achieved by typing 'Alt+V', 'O', 'O' now.

See also: Bug #768277 “Add mnemonics for menu items without verbs / default key mapping”