Sons of the Forest: How to Assign Hotkeys

Knowing how to assign Hotkeys in Sons of the Forest will save you a lot of time while surviving on the game’s cannibal-infested island. Managing your inventory and opening your Backpack to grab a weapon or item can be a slog and even leave you open to attack. But until now, that was the only quick swap.

Thankfully, the functionality to hotkey weapons and items was added in Hotfix 2, bringing a much-needed quality-of-life improvement to Endnight Games’ popular title. The guide below goes over how to assign slots, and it’s super simple. 

How to Hotkey Weapons and Items in Sons of the Forest

Screenshot by GameSkinny

To bind a weapon or item to a Hotkey in Sons of the Forest: 

• Open your inventory.
• Hover over an item. 
• Look for an empty, opaque box to the right of an item’s name.
• Press a key on your keyboard 1-0. 

With that done, you won’t have to constantly open your inventory or add items to your Backpack as a pseudo-quick-select menu.

Items like the Modern Axe and GPS Tracker can be assigned to Hotkeys, as can the Flashlight. However, you can’t assign all items to Hotkeys. Only items with empty, opaque boxes can be bound. Once an item is bound to a slot (again, a number 1-0), that specific binding will appear in the box until the item is reassigned.

To reassign a Hotkey slot in Sons of the Forest, simply hover over an item in your inventory and press another number, 1-0. As of this writing (February 28, 2023), completely removing an item from a Hotkey slot isn’t possible beyond assigning a different item to the same binding. 

As you may expect, this only applies to players using a mouse and keyboard to play Sons of the Forest. There are no ways to do this on a controller, nor is there currently another tool, such as a weapon wheel or radial menu, that allows for it. It’s possible that Endnight Games will add that type of functionality in the future, but we don’t know for sure yet. 

And that’s how you assign Hotkeys in Sons of the Forest. Now your weapons and items are only one button press away. For other controls and functions, we have a complete list of default inputs and keybindings that acts as a companion guide and isn’t as scary as Kelvin. We’ve also covered much more about the horror game over in our survival hub. 

Featured image by GameSkinny.