Merge pull request #2728 from Carreau/shifttab also bind shift tab for tooltip + config This does not change the curent behavior, only add the shift+tab shortcut. Note that the shift tab shortcut has a slightly different behavior. You can select part of a line and pressing shift-tab will show you the tooltip only for the selection. This is disabled for multiline selection to still allow to unindent block of code, Keep in mind that the real real shortcut for indent unindent is Ctrl+] or [ . Select/tab is not really supported by codemirror. Finally the "tooltip_on_tab" behavior is globally configurable via IPython.config so that it could be easily switched to false. It can be overridden via js console for test purpose. IPython.config.tooltip_on_tab = true | false Take effect immediately, only on current notebook. or globally via custom.js var user_conf = {tooltip_on_tab:false | true}; $.extend(IPython.config, user_conf)