[Solved]
Ignore this folks I actually just found out about the focus area in the manual there now so that fixed what I wanted to do
I use a mac and the keyboard shortcuts work but only inside the sample editors waveform window and the main pattern editor window. For as long as I’ve used Renoise I’ve never been able to figure out how to use them in the instruments tab, and sample list in the sample editor. For example when I want to rename a sample I’ll have to right click the sample in the sample list then select rename with the mousepad, if I try to use the keyboard shortcut cmd+R it just defaults to the sample waveform and runs the reverse sample process. How do I stop this and use the keyboard shortcuts the way I need to in the sample list and instrument tab?