Skip to content

History and messages

Press F9 to open the History screen. From there, Tab switches to the Messages tab, which holds the running archive of every letter and notification the game has sent you.

The History screen

History is a flat list of colony statistics and records. Arrow up and down to move through it. Type ahead to jump to an entry by name. Home and End jump to the ends of the list. For general list navigation, see navigating menus.

The letters screen: L key

For the live list of current letters and alerts, press L on the map. This opens the notification menu directly without going through History first.

The L key collects all current messages, letters, and alerts and presents them as a list:

  • Up/Down move between items in the list.
  • Home/End jump to the first or last item.
  • Type ahead to search: start typing to jump to a matching item.
  • Enter opens the full detail view for the current item. In detail view, arrow up and down through the content line by line. After the last line you reach the buttons at the bottom. Not every letter has buttons.
  • Left/Right move between buttons when you are in the buttons section of the detail view. Press Enter on a button to activate it.
  • Escape goes back from detail view to the list, or closes the notification menu from the list.
  • ] (right bracket) deletes the currently selected item. Only letters can be deleted; alerts cannot be removed this way.

Deleted letters still live in the F9 History archive, so deleting one here only clears it from the current notification list.

The Messages archive: F9 then Tab

The Messages tab in the History screen (F9, then Tab) is a persistent archive. It includes letters and messages you have already dismissed.

When the Messages tab is open:

  • Up/Down navigate the list; Enter opens the detail view for the selected item.
  • Alt+L toggles whether letters appear in the list. Letters are shown by default.
  • Alt+M toggles whether messages appear in the list. Messages are hidden by default.
  • Alt+J jumps to the location associated with the current item, if it has one, and closes the History window.
  • Alt+P pins or unpins the current item.
  • In detail view, arrow up and down through the content, then through the buttons. Left/Right move between buttons; Enter activates the focused button.

What gets deleted and what stays

Pressing ] on a letter in the notification menu (L key) removes it from the current notification stack. Alerts cannot be removed this way. The History archive (F9) keeps a record of past events regardless of dismissal; items there are not affected by deletion in the notification menu.

Learn more

For what specific event letters mean and how to respond to them, the Events page on the RimWorld wiki covers individual events in depth.