App makers like us often need to test apps in an incremental fashion to help progress the app design by validating formulas, expressions, data manipulation, control settings etc. Knowing the shortcuts to test apps in the canvas/web studio will save us time!

Here are two Windows keyboard shortcuts to improve your app testing experience:

1. Alt key (Ctrl+Shift key on IE)
2. Alt+Spacebar

Most of us know holding the alt key (or Ctrl+Shift on IE) while clicking will activate buttons or other controls. To change the text in input boxes, you can double click on them.

But wouldn’t it be ideal to switch the entire app to test mode within the web studio while you are activating buttons/controls, filling in input boxes and navigating between screens to validate changes as they are being worked on without having to hold shortcut keys for every click?

That’s what Alt+Spacebar does for you. Please note that this keyboard shortcut does not work on IE and Ctrl+Shift is the way to test controls & buttons on IE. Also, using Alt+Spacebar can pop up the shortcut drop down menu for the current window. You can click anywhere on the gray studio area to ignore it and then continue testing your app.

Press the Alt or Shift key to escape test mode and you are back on design mode.

NOTE: This is not a Microsoft supported shortcut but it works.

Happy PowerApp’in & Testing!