Skill Bar – Aleczan's New Diary (FFXIV: ARR)

As you can see, on your game screen, there are rows of skill bars with 10 buttons each, this is called Hotbar.

By default, when you newly start the game, it will show only 2 bars, but you can config your settings to make it show more. You can rearrange the buttons order, you can move your bars to specific part or corner of your screen. You can also set or assign (keybind) shortcut button for each of the hotbar button as well. (Like, ALT+1 or CTRL+5, or even SHIFT+CTRL+0 – but we will explain Keybind settings in depth later.)

To access your Horbar configuration, first hit K button to open your System menu and select Character Configuration.

Then among the red and gold buttons on the left pane, select “Hotbar Settings” category. You can see in the pic below that there are checkboxes. When you check it, the interface of you gameplay screen will show the hotbar you select. The unchecked ones will be hidden, invisible.

On the right, you can also select the form of the specific hotbar. They can be vertical or horizontal, and can appear as 1 row, 2 rows, or 4 rows.

Look at my Hotbar 10, for example. Now it’s invisible because the box is not checked.

When you check or light up the checkbox of Hotbar 10, it will appear somewhere on your screen. You can drag it to reposition to anywhere you like.

See how when you change choice of form, it became 3×4 row instead of 1 long row.

Next, let’s explore one function of the Horbar Settings: Enable hotbar cycling button. This setting applies to your default Hotbar 1. When it is enabled (it’s enabled by default), you will see the arrow button above and below number 1 of Hotbar 1, on your screen. When you click the arrow, it will show other bar instead of Horbar 1.

This is good for when you want to quickly access other Hotbar that you didn’t set to show. For faster selection, you can also use Shift+1 or Shift+5, for example, to immediately jump to the hotbar number that you desire.

When you uncheck the box for “Enable hotbar cycling button” it will no longer let you use the arrow to change hotbar display. But you can still use the Shift+NUMBER command to jump between horbars.