Command Palette

To open Structure Settings without the menu: press Ctrl+K, type struct, and press Enter.

The command palette runs commands by name. Open it with Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on macOS) or choose Help > Command Palette.... A search box reading Type a command... appears over the canvas.

Using the palette

1. Press Ctrl+K.
2. Type part of a command’s name, such as png or derive.
3. Press Up and Down to move through the results; the first result is selected for you.
4. Press Enter to run the selected command, or click any result.

Escape closes the palette without running anything. Each result shows its menu category, and its shortcut when it has one.

What it lists

Every command in the menu bar is in the palette, under its menu’s name as the category (File, Edit, View and so on). Commands inside a submenu carry the submenu’s name as a prefix, so the Lewis entry of the Derive View submenu reads Derive View: Lewis. The palette does not list itself.

A few entries exist only in the palette:

Entry	What it does
Select Tool, Bond Tool, Ring Tool and the other tool entries	Switch to that tool. The list covers Select, Pan, Bond, Ring, Eraser, Text, Arrow, Line, Shape, Bracket, Lone Pair, Radical, Orbital, Charge, Projection and LaTeX.
Element Colors...	Opens the Color Scheme Editor. See Color Schemes.
Template Browser...	Opens the template browser (Shift+T). See Template Browser.
Periodic Table...	Opens the periodic table so you can pick any element.
Toggle Animation Mode	Turns animation mode on or off (Shift+A).

The Orbital Tool’s shortcut is Shift+O, because plain O sets oxygen.

How matching works

The palette matches the text you type as a plain substring, ignoring case, against each command’s name and its category. It does not do fuzzy matching, so strset finds nothing while struct finds Structure Settings.

Commands whose name contains the text come first, ordered by how early the text appears in the name. Commands that match only by their category follow, so typing file also lists the rest of the File menu. At most 15 results are shown; type more letters to narrow the list. With no match, the palette reads No matching commands.

The palette lists only the menu commands you could use right now. It leaves out commands the menus hide in the current document, such as Export LaTeX Animation... when the document has no LaTeX animation, or Export HTML Presentation... outside presentation mode. It also leaves out Structure menu commands that are greyed out for the current selection. The list is rebuilt each time the palette opens.