I can confirm it's finally fixed in 29.8 official release today! ;-)

Thank God someone asked about this. I use ctrl K religiously for keyboard increment changes. It's always been a lightning quick action, which as a graphic designer is paramount. If you work 8+ hours a day moving objects around, you don't want extra clicks involved in your process. I hope someone fixes this soon, it's a major workflow killer.

A recent change to the Preferences panel that has negatively impacted our workflow. As a user since Illustrator V3, I have always used the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl + K to open Preferences, where the 'Keyboard Increment' field was traditionally the default selection. This allowed for a rapid workflow: Cmd/Ctrl + K, type a number, Enter, and the increment was set.
In the current version, the 'Search' field is now the default selection. This requires extra keystrokes or mouse clicks to navigate to the 'Keyboard Increment' field, slowing down a process that was once instantaneous. My entire team has noted this disruption.

Additionally, if I start typing a decimal increment in the search window by accident (because that's what I'm used to doing in previous versions), the units of measure automatically switch to points! I have to go back into Preferences and change it back every time. I always use inches, so this is extremely frustrating.

Press CMD+K, enter a value and hit Enter. This was daily time saver for precise designs. Please return this functionality.

I have been working with Illustrator since 2000. Until now, it was very convenient to set the Keyboard increment in the preferences panel. All you had to do was press CMD+K and enter the increment value (because the cursor immediately stood where you needed it) and press ENTER. This saved a lot of time, because this operation has to be performed very often. In the new version 29.7.1, when you press CMD+K and open the Preferences panel, the cursor automatically stops in the newly appeared SEARCH field. So you have to press TAB 4 times to move the cursor to the Keyboard increment field and after entering the number you now have to press ENTER twice... :((((( Couldn't we just return everything to the way it was before? That newly appeared SEARCH field is good, but maybe the cursor could automatically appear where it was before - i.e. in the Keyboard increment field? Understand - in professional work we use the keyboard and shortcuts, and this was a very convenient solution until you came up with the idea of putting the SEARCH field in the preferences panel...

While I appreciate the drive for progress, this was a step backward in my workflow.
I use the keyboard increment dozens of times a day and adding the extra steps has really screwed things up for me.

I'm glad the focus on the keyboard increment is back, but as previously stated, you need to hit return twice (which started happening with the latest general build) to commit and exit the Preferences Window. Please change it to a single return press like it used to be.

Hi, focus is on Keyboard Increment in the Beta, which is good, but you still have to double return to get back into your workflow, which although isn't terrible, is still a bit of a pain.

Also noticed some fonts don't work in the Beta but do in the full release version.

It has the focus on the increment field, but you have to hit Enter 2x to exit the dialog. Used to be 1x

Hello Egor Chistyakov, personally, I cannot afford to work professionally on a beta version. I am usually the type of person who does not change versions unless necessary. However, your bug that completely changed the fonts in the document was extremely critical for my work. To fix this, I had to perform the dreaded update to 29.7. I hope it will be officially released very soon, because it's just a monstrous waste of time on a daily basis.

I always used to use CMD-K as it was to change keyboard increment.

Just CMD-K, type, Return.

Now I have to press CMD-K, tabx4, type, Returnx2 - such a faff!

The solution with the Properties panel is not an improvement: when opening that panel, one STILL has to navigate focus towards the keyboard increment field. What's worse: this can only be done by handling the mouse. Tabbing your way to that field can't be done since [TAB] is the main interface's keyboard shortcut for hiding/unhiding the tool panels.

Adobe Illustrator until version 29.71 used to focus on the key input field of the settings menu when settings are open (CMD + K / CTRL + K ).
This enabled users to quickly change the input amount of arrow key and very convenient to move / place objects when designing.
I have been using this function for my design for over 20 years and I am definitely not the only designer.
Since 29.71 the cursor is focused on search settings form and it needs a click or pressing the tab bar 4 times to reach the key input amount field.
This completely broke my workflow.
I sincerely ask you to bring the function back or set a new shortcut key (CMD+OPTION+K or something) that opens the setting window focused on the key input field.

There's no problem in have a box for search preferences.

But for my workflow, keyboard increment is crucial to input perfect dimension size! I have my automations ctrl+k then put the dimension ride away! Please fix this.

And the dimensions units are allways changing! Arggggh c'mon guys!

Hi.
If you enable the selection tool (V) and there´s nothing selected, the same field will appear on the Properties panel.
Since they implemented this, I have never needed to open the Preferences panel to change it anymore.

Quickly and easily changing keyboard increments is critical is my design, layout and proofing process. The new search field is fine just don't make it the default highlight field when the preference window is opened. How about just moving it to the bottom? Sounds like a pretty simple fix to me.

Egor... so you removed this feature? .Does this mean that I can update my illustrator again? this "feature" had ruined illustrator for me...

Since the new update to 29.7.1 the cursor doesn't default to the field Keyboard Increment when pressing [CMD]-K or [CTRL]-K in order to open the preferences dialog. Now it defaults to the (new) search field.

It hinders flow: typically I use to alter the keyboard increment to different values often on the fly when designing, now an extra grab to the mouse is needed, or tabbing my way through a lot of other fields before I can land focus on the Keyboard Increment field...

Fabrice, i can do with keyboard but i putting twice