F6 switches focus between the main pane and the sidebar. That’s useful enough to be listed if you ask me.
Since Files 43 the sidebar can’t get keyboard focus. F6 also doesn’t do anything. I guess you’re an older version of Files?
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Yeah, 42.2 at work. I just finally found the F6 shortcut online here at work, knowing that it wasn’t listed in Files 43 at home either. I guess I hadn’t noticed at home that you can’t focus the sidebar anymore 
I am using nautilus 43 on Fedora Silverblue 37, and you can focus the sidebar with the keyboard, although you have to do it in a round-about way. The hamburger menu button in the toolbar needs to have keyboard focus, at which point you press Control + Tab. I agree that it makes sense to have a shortcut to switch between the sidebar and the files view.
I didn’t know about this F6 effect.
It looks like ir was a shortcut provided by the GtkPaned widget. Files 43 uses the AdwFlap widget instead.
I think F6 is used by Web browsers to focus the URL. Maybe it would be more interesting to use it as a single-key alternative to CtrlF6…
That said, it should be possible to focus the sidebar using Tab or ShiftTab to cycle focus forward or backward. Is this not working or not useful in practice?
Doh! I missed that. Tab / ShiftTabworks on Files 43.1 to move keyboard focus to the flap.
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