In Fortnite, building is life. Bedrock shooter keybinds such as WASD for movement, spacebar for jump, and Ctrl for crouch vie for keyboard space alongside nearly half a dozen commands for slapping together a life-saving shack while under fire or securing a kill from atop a looming murdertower. All are sacred (except for C, weirdos) for appeasing the victory royale gods, but the most common creed shared by Fortnite’s community to new players orders priority in just two words: build better. Problem is, the best keybinds for each player are hard to find. 

Thus, here’s a couple of suggested input schemes focusing on snappier access to your crucial construction keys. You’ll ideally want to acclimate to the most instinctual setup for rapidly swapping to build mode with minimal breaks in movement and aiming, so our examples do their best to keep your hands steady near the PC gamer’s home position: left on WASD and right on mouse buttons.

Some general tips: 

Unbinding your mouse scroll wheel from your weapon and crafting slots is a small but effective tweak for avoiding embarrassing equipment mishaps in the thick of a building frenzy. It’s far more beneficial teaching your fingers to jolt to dedicated slot keys instead of fumbling with a squirrelly scroll wheel.

Slot keybinds reflect the standard setup of reserving your last two inventory spaces for shield potions and medicine, but our suggestions are interchangeable with wherever you prefer to stick your consumables.

Unlisted keybinds remain in their default assignments, but feel free to experiment and elaborate off our recommendations to set a more personalized layout—customization is a beautiful part of PC gaming, after all. As of writing, heading into the Playground via a solo no-fill queue provides a useful testing ground for fine-tuning your keys in peace.

Free up your Left Shift key and turn on ‘Always Run’ in the options. 

Mousepower 

As its name subtly implies, the Mousepower setup is themed around tying a few important build binds to the surefire grip of your dominant hand. Side mouse buttons are vital for quick access to the frequently used wall and ramp builds, and if you have more than the standard two side buttons, you can definitely flex in additional build abilities (such as switching between materials) for your thumb to manage. Floors, typically used for midair or lateral traversals, cosies up to WASD on Q for continual movement as you place down planks (you’ll momentarily lose left strafe if you shift your ring finger off A, however). 

Slot keys are also packed in a bit closer to your keyboard’s left side, preventing awkward stretches to hit less-used commands such as trap placement and roof builds. For a bolder alternative, you can try assigning jump to your scroll wheel button (click the wheel, don’t spin it) and devote your vast spacebar to a high-use build component.

Harvesting Tool: 1
Weapon Slot 1: 2
Weapon Slot 2: 3
Weapon Slot 3: 4
Weapon Slot 4: Z
Weapon Slot 5: X
Wall: Mouse Button 4
Floor: Q
Stairs: Mouse Button 5
Roof: V
Trap: 5

Keyfort 

If your mouse lacks side buttons (something you should look into fixing) or you’re more comfortable dedicating your mouse strictly to aiming and shooting, the Keyfort config is for you. This setup establishes a closed perimeter around your WASD of all your essential build commands. It heavily borrows the use of your spacebar thumb to conduct construction efforts, so take a page from Mousepower above and rebind jump to something else (try left Shift and switch on always run) or risk weakened dodging power when throwing walls or ramps together. Still, the comforting adjacency of your building slot keys encourages quick thumb-slides between movement and maintenance with practice.

Harvesting Tool: F
Weapon Slot 1: 2
Weapon Slot 2: 3
Weapon Slot 3: 4
Weapon Slot 4: Q
Weapon Slot 5: X
Wall: B
Floor: N
Stairs: V
Roof: T
Trap: 5