Bicycle For Your Mind
Paletro Icon
Paletro Brings the Command Palette Everywhere
Product: Paletro — Command Palette in any applications
Price: $6.99
The first time I was exposed to the Command Palette was in Sublime Text. All the commands are available to you when you press the keyboard command, ⌘⇧P in Sublime Text. You get a drop-down menu with fuzzy search, you can start typing and the list changes as the search is better defined. It is a lovely touch in a text editor. All the commands are available instantly. I fell in love with the feature and spent the next four years with Sublime Text as my main text editor.
The feature has been copied by Atom, Visual Studio Code, and even a file manager called fman.
As my knowledge and exposure increased, I discovered that this was an interesting implementation of an old idea. VIM and Emacs both have implementations of the command palette available. They are called with different keyboard commands, but they both implement the same idea. VIM does it with the : key in normal mode, and Emacs with Meta-X.
BBEdit has a similar feature with the ⇧⌘U keyboard command to give you the Command Palette.
Enter Paletro
Now we have Paletro with a Command Palette implementation which is system-wide. You can now press ⇧⌘P in any application and get the same command palette with all the commands of the frontmost application accessible to you in a fuzzy search equipped drop-down menu.
For instance, in Drafts, this is the initial window Paletro gives me.
Drafts with Paletro
When I start typing, the contents in the window changes.
Find in Drafts
Paletro is going to be a great addition to the workflow. The commands show up with the keyboard command next to it. You can learn the more esoteric keyboard commands while using the application.
Customizing Paletro
Customizing Paletro
You can choose the keyboard command which activates Paletro. The more important feature is that you can enable and disable Paletro in applications of your choice. You can disable it in applications which have a native Command Palette.
The application ships with a collection of nice themes and the ability to design your themes is coming.
A Comment about Documentation
Paletro provides comprehensive documentation. It is not a complicated application but the documentation is fantastic. Good documentation is much appreciated.
Conclusions About Paletro
Paletro is a nice addition to the workflow. If you are interested in staying concentrated on the keyboard and not monkeying around with the mouse/trackpad and menu items, Paletro will help you.
I love it. It is a utility which I am elated to use.
Paletro is recommended heartily.
Note: I was provided a review license for Paletro by the developer when I asked for one.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie.