Command Palette Overview

[priethor]

It's been more than a year since the Command Palette was first introduced in WordPress 6.3. The number of commands has grown in subsequent releases, and there are a handful of proposals to evolve the Command Palette in different ways. This issue aims to summarize all these efforts.

Palette availability

Currently the Command Palette only works inside the different block editors. There is a pair of issue and PR addressing this so that the Command Palette can be invoked everywhere in the wp-admin and the frontend:

• Command Palette: enable the command palette to be evoked everywhere in WordPress #58218
• Follow-up: study possible global shortcuts for most-used actions like preview/edit.

Command organization

Right now, all command search results appear together. As the number of results grows due to adding more commands grows or having lots of content related to the searches, this makes it harder to find the right command and, in general, understand the results.

For example, if you type a in the Command Palette, you will get a mix of results like adding new post/pages, navigating to templates or to specific pages that contain the letter a in their name, relying only on icons to explain the purpose of the command.

There are many ways to mitigate that, from improving the context and icons of the results to grouping the commands by type.

• Exploration: Supporting command types and filtered searching #53190
• Command Palette: Add context to post type commands #51505

Command context

Apart from structuring the commands better, as the available commands grow in both directions with site-wide admin commands and niche, context-specific ones, the results need to take the context more into account. There is currently an in-depth discussion of site/page/template editing contextual commands at #50407

• Command Palette: Mapping Contextual Commands #50407
• Command Palette: Suggested items in browse mode in different order to Site Browser #53280
• Display some prompts or options in Command Palette at launch #53400

New commands

Considering the command context a key feature of the Command Palette usability, the following command suggestions are grouped by the context in which they should appear. NOTE: This is a work in progress, and the list will grow!

Available everywhere

• Command Palette: Add data view shortcuts #60806
• Port some WP-CLI commands to the Command Palette #53299
• Install, remove, activate, deactivate plugins
• Install, remove, activate, deactivate themes
• Command Palette: add command to switch back to the site editor #61460

Available in any block editor

• Add command to view the document outline #53191
• Add media insertion commands to the Editor Command Palette #65542
• Command Palette: Block actions in command center #51559

Available in site editor

• Command Palette: add command to open fonts #54880
• Add command for Style Book and improve Style Revisions command #58143
• Add command for renaming a page in the Site Editor #60089

Available when editing a post/page

• Command Palette: add command for featured image flow #56930
• Command Palette: Suggest a "View page" action when editing a page #55806

Extensibility and Developer Experience

• Add support for identifying third party commands #53192
• Allow hooking into command palette commands and command loaders #58200
• Unify Keyboard Shortcuts and Commands under a unique API (commands) #59004

[annezazu]

@poojabhimani12 @akshaya-rane @benazeer-ben @rinkalpagdar @alamgir-multidots in talking to you all about contributions, I wanted to flag this as another area to help out with, similar to in-line comments. Are you all interested in doing this work? It would be a more focused project than some of the extensibility items that have been started.

[poojabhimani12]

Thank you for bringing this up! We’re interested in contributing to a focused project like this.

[annezazu]

Just wanted to note some lovely PRs already underway for anyone following and who can help with reviews:

• Open Media Library: Add Media Library Command to Editor Command Palette #66759
• Display some prompts or options in Command Palette at launch #66856
• Command for save, delete and duplicate post types #66834
• Add command for publish post types #66820
• Add command to navigate to site editor #66722
• Add command: View page/post #66720

Thanks for all the efforts here.