The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated an abrupt change in university teacher education, in that most face-to-face courses were replaced by online education, which had a profound impact on students. Pandemic distance learning required students to possess a high degree of self-regulation concerning their learning environment and to find new ways of communicating with their peers and instructors. At the same time, the novel situation offered opportunities to experience new educational applications. To learn more about the possible benefits of distance learning, this study examines how the first online semester during the pandemic contributed to pre-service teachers' intentions to use digital learning materials in the future. Pre-service teachers enrolled in a German university (n = 348) answered an online questionnaire at the end of the summer term of 2020. Findings from structural equation modeling showed that the perceived quality of teacher training during the online semester and self-reported improvements in digital skills predicted significantly students' intentions to use digital learning materials for future teaching. Moreover, results revealed that attentional regulation predicted perceived quality of teacher training and self-reported improvements in digital skills during distance learning. Thus, attentional regulation had a significant indirect effect on pre-service teachers' behavioral intentions. The indirect effects of other resource management strategies (effort and time management) and intrinsic motivation were not significant. Our results show that the quality of online instruction was an important factor in student teachers' learning processes during the pandemic. Based on our results, we discuss implications for the promotion of pre-service teachers' intentions to use digital learning materials for teaching in schools.