Drive the console from the keyboard
The console has a keyboard spine, and until this page it was undocumented: the command palette was mentioned twice across the whole documentation set and no keyboard shortcut appeared anywhere at all. If you have been clicking through the rail, this is the shorter route.
The four keys that matter
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
Cmd-K or Ctrl-K |
Opens the command palette, from anywhere |
/ |
Also opens the command palette |
? |
Opens the shortcut cheat sheet |
g then a letter |
Jumps straight to a screen |
Escape closes the palette. It closes whichever overlay is on top, so with a confirmation open over a panel it dismisses the confirmation first rather than everything at once.
The go-to chords
Press g, release it, then press the letter. There are thirteen.
| Chord | Screen | Chord | Screen | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
g o |
Overview | g m |
Topology map | |
g d |
Downpipes | g c |
Cost calculator | |
g r |
Runs | g n |
Notifications | |
g s |
Restore | g e |
Security centre | |
g k |
Keys | g p |
Reports | |
g a |
Access | g v |
Credentials and expiry | |
g l |
Audit log |
The letter is not always the initial, because several screens start with the same one. g s is Restore (Security centre is g e), and g v is Credentials and expiry. The cheat sheet on ? is generated from the same list this table is, so it will not drift from the console you are actually running.
What the palette will and will not do
The palette is a fuzzy command line over one registry of actions, and the same registry feeds the go-to chords and the cheat sheet. That matters for a reason beyond tidiness: the palette never offers you an action you are not allowed to run. Every command is filtered by your role and by the engine’s current state, so a command that would come back 403 is not listed rather than listed-and-refused. The engine remains the enforcement point; the palette is matching it so the list you see is honest.
Dangerous actions do not execute from the palette. Start a restore, delete a downpipe and rotate keys are all in there, and choosing one takes you to the review-then-confirm flow on its own screen. The palette is how you get to the confirmation, never a way around it. Benign things (toggle the theme, copy the engine URL, open the recovery sheet) do run inline.
You can also search for your own downpipes and runs by name or id. That search reads names and run ids only: no secret, no key fingerprint, no credential value passes through the palette, and it talks only to your own in-account engine.
Turning the single-key shortcuts off
A single-key shortcut is a problem for anyone using speech input or an on-screen keyboard, where a stray character can fire a navigation. So the single-key layer, meaning /, ? and the g chords, can be switched off in Settings, under Accessibility. This is WCAG 2.1.4 Character Key Shortcuts.
Cmd-K and Ctrl-K keep working when that switch is off, because a chord with a modifier cannot be triggered by dictation. So turning the single-key shortcuts off costs you the jumps, not the palette.
The shortcuts are also inert while you are typing in a field, and while a modal owns the keyboard, so pressing g in a search box types a g.
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