Sandustry Controls and Shortcuts

The official wiki has no controls page. These are gathered from the places that do document keys: the developers’ pinned FAQ, the Beginner’s Guide, and the individual tool pages.

Building and copying

Key	What it does
C	Select a structure to copy
Ctrl + C	Copy the selection
Ctrl + V	Paste it
Ctrl + H	Flip a copied or selected structure
Ctrl	Replace hotkey — swap a building for the one you are holding
Shift	Marquee: drag a box around player-placed blocks
Backspace	Delete a marquee selection

These are defaults, and the developers note the obvious consequence: rebinding your keys can stop the combinations working.

The replace hotkey is the underrated one. When you unlock Conveyor Belt Mk.2 you do not rebuild anything — hold Ctrl and run along the existing belts. Blueprints covers the saving and sharing side of the same system.

Moving a structure, or copying it

The Marquee is worth understanding as a pair of behaviours rather than one tool.

Hold Shift and drag a box around what you want. Then:

• Click and drag a selected block and the whole structure moves. The originals are deleted and the copies appear at the new spot.
• Hold C while you click and drag and the original stays where it is. You get a copy.

So C is the copy modifier in both places it appears — once for the clipboard, once for the marquee.

One exception is worth knowing before you plan a rebuild: Pipes are the only player-placed block the Marquee cannot select. A water system does not relocate with the rest of the factory.

Shift does four things

This trips people up, so it is worth stating as a rule rather than a list of exceptions. Shift is not bound to one action — it modifies whatever you are currently doing:

While you are…	Shift does
Moving around	Sprint Boost, a temporary speed boost, once researched
Selecting	Activates the Marquee
Placing a Conveyor Belt	Reverses the direction of travel
Placing a Launcher	Forces it to face straight up instead of angling

The last two are the same idea twice: while you are placing a logistics building, Shift overrides its default orientation. Belts get built backwards and Launchers get built angled when you wanted vertical, and both are one key away from correct rather than a delete-and-retry.

The one place Shift is not the answer is copying a marquee selection. That is C.

Tabs and the hotbar

The tab menu lists its own keys down the left of the screen: Inventory on Tab, Building on Q, Research on T, Upgrades on U.

The hotbar is deeper than it looks — ten hotbars of ten slots each. Hold Alt and press a number to jump to that hotbar, or hold Alt and scroll to move through them.

Movement

Two of the keys you will use constantly are research unlocks rather than defaults, so they do nothing until you buy them:

• Space toggles Hover, which lets you float in place and pass through structures — tier 1, 50 Gold.
• Shift gives a temporary speed boost with Sprint Boost — tier 1, 200 Gold.

Both are in the cheapest tier, and the maps page makes the case for taking the whole exploration set early.

If you get stuck inside something

There is an unstuck command in the pause menu. It exists because the ancients’ puzzles can close behind you, and it is the documented way out.

What is not documented

There is no official controls reference, so anything not listed above is not listed anywhere — including the keys for the construction tools whose own wiki pages have not been written yet. The in-game keybinding menu is the authority on your own setup; this page is the authority on what the sources actually state.

Related

• Sandustry Blueprints — saving and sharing what you copied
• Sandustry Factory Layout — what to build with all of it
• Sandustry Beginner Guide — the first hour, in order