---
title: Command palette and keyboard shortcuts: run your monitoring from the keyboard
description: You have 200 monitors and you need the checkout one. Scrolling a list is slow, and the filter is three clicks away. Press ⌘K, type chec, press Enter. Here is everything the WatchFor dashboard does from the keyboard: the command palette, the g and c chords, the Inbox keys, and an incident handled almost without the mouse.
canonical: https://watchfor.io/blog/command-palette-keyboard-shortcuts
---
# Command palette and keyboard shortcuts: run your monitoring from the keyboard
2026-10-03 · WatchFor Team · Monitoring · monitoring, incidents
You have 200 monitors and you need the checkout one. Scrolling a list is slow, and the filter is three clicks away. Press ⌘K, type chec, press Enter. Here is everything the WatchFor dashboard does from the keyboard: the command palette, the g and c chords, the Inbox keys, and an incident handled almost without the mouse.
You have 200 monitors and you need the checkout one. You can scroll the
Monitors list, or open the filter and type, or remember which tag it has.
Or you can press ⌘ K, type `chec` and press
↵. You are on the monitor's page before your hand has found the
mouse.
That is most of what a keyboard does for you in a monitoring tool. It isn't
about the one dramatic night. It's the forty small trips a day: to the
dashboard, to a monitor, to the incident list, to "new monitor". Each one is
a second or two by mouse. During an incident those seconds are spent while
something is broken, which is when they feel longest.
This post covers every keyboard interaction the WatchFor dashboard has today,
with the real results from our demo organization. On Windows and Linux, read
Ctrl wherever it says ⌘.
## ⌘K: any monitor in a few letters
⌘ K opens the command palette. So does /, and
so does the **Search or jump to…** box in the top bar, which is the same
palette with a visible label. Type a few letters and the results come back
grouped.
In the demo organization there are two monitors whose names start with
"Checkout": the staging one and production. `chec` finds both and nothing
else in the Monitors group. The first result is highlighted, so ↵
alone opens it; one ↓ first gets you production.
The monitor search matches more than the name:
- **Name.** `chec` → Checkout. `pay` → Payments API.
- **Target.** You remember the domain, not what someone called the monitor.
`saucedemo` finds every monitor pointed at saucedemo.com, here both
Checkout monitors and the Demo shop HTTP check.
- **Description,** if you write them.
- **An exact tag.** `production` lists the monitors tagged `production`.
That makes a tag work like a saved filter you can reach from any page.
The search runs in the database and returns at most 20 matches, so the list
stays short however many monitors you have.
### Hosts, pages and tools in the same box
The palette isn't only monitors. With the same query it also searches:
- **Hosts,** by name, IP address, OS, kernel, CPU model, agent version or
`key=value` tag, each shown with its current status (online, stale,
offline). `ubuntu` lists every host running Ubuntu, and an IP pasted
from a log line finds the server it belongs to.
- **Every dashboard page,** including the ones one level down in the
sidebar: `api` → API keys, `deliv` → Delivery log, `post` → Post-mortems,
`members`, `subscription`, your profile and security settings.
- **The Toolbox:** `dkim` → DKIM Checker, `api` → API Tester.
Here is `web`, which happens to hit three of those groups at once: monitors
whose name or target contains "web", the `web-1` and `web-2` hosts, and the
web-related tools.
Two details that matter in daily use. The palette opens empty every time,
so you never start from yesterday's query. And it doesn't open while your
cursor is in a text field, because there / is a character you
might be typing. Press Esc or click outside the field first.
## Jump between sections: g, then a letter
For places rather than things, there are two-key chords. Press g,
let go, then press the second key within about a second:
| Keys | Goes to |
| --- | --- |
| g d | Dashboard |
| g m | Monitors |
| g h | Hosts |
| g i | Incidents |
| g s | Status pages |
| g r | Reports |
| g c | Channels & contacts |
| g o | On-call |
| g w | Maintenance windows |
| g n | Inbox |
| g t | Toolbox |
| g , | Settings |
The letters follow the sidebar, so after a day you stop thinking about them.
## Create things: c, then a letter
The same idea with c for create. c m opens the
new-monitor dialog from any page, which is the one you'll use most.
| Keys | Creates |
| --- | --- |
| c m | Monitor |
| c s | Status page |
| c c | Notification channel |
| c p | Contact |
| c w | Maintenance window |
Members without permission to manage monitors get nothing from
c m, the same as the disabled **New monitor** button.
## Everything else, in one table
| Where | Keys | Does |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Palette | ↑ ↓, ↵, Esc | Move, open, close |
| Inbox | j / k (or ↓ / ↑) | Next / previous notification |
| Inbox | ↵ | Open what it's about, such as the incident |
| Inbox | u / e | Toggle read / dismiss |
| Incident notes | ⌘ ↵ | Save the note |
| Incident notes | @, then ↵ or Tab | Mention a teammate |
| Post-mortem | ⌘ B / ⌘ I / ⌘ E | Bold / italic / inline code |
| Post-mortem | `## ` or `- ` at line start | Heading or bullet list |
| Tag fields | ↵ or ,; Backspace | Add a tag; remove the last one |
| Anywhere | ⌘ B | Collapse or expand the sidebar |
| Anywhere | ? | The cheat sheet |
| Anywhere | Esc | Close a dialog |
## An incident from the keyboard
Here is the night version, end to end. The page wakes you, you open the
laptop, the dashboard is already loaded.
1. g n opens the Inbox. The newest notification is at
the top, and for a page that just woke you that's the incident.
j selects it, ↵ opens the incident page. If
you'd rather see everything that is open, g i goes
to the Incidents list instead.
2. Click **Acknowledge**. There is no single-key shortcut for it today.
Acknowledging stops repeat notifications for this incident and marks it
as being handled.
3. Click into the **Internal notes** box. Write what you see,
type `@` to pull in the database owner, pick them with ↓ and
Tab, and press ⌘ ↵. The note is saved
and the mentioned person gets an email with a link to the incident.
[Internal notes](/docs/alerting/internal-notes) never appear on the
status page.
4. ⌘ K, the first letters of a related monitor or the
host's IP, ↵: you're comparing its last checks without going
back through a list.
5. When it's over, the [post-mortem editor](/docs/alerting/postmortems)
takes `## ` for a section heading and `- ` for a list, with
⌘ B and ⌘ I as usual.
By the time step 3 is done, the incident is acknowledged and the team has
context, and you have used the mouse twice: once for Acknowledge, once for
the note box. If your team is still tuning
when it gets woken up at all, [alert fatigue](/blog/alert-fatigue) and the
[incident response playbook](/blog/incident-response-playbook) are the
other half of the job.
## Tips
**Press ? when you forget.** It opens the cheat sheet on any
page of your organization, and the palette's footer repeats the two chord rules.
**Name monitors for typing.** "Checkout" and "Checkout (staging)" are easy
to reach with four letters. "HTTP check 7" is not. The same goes for tags:
one short tag per environment or customer turns ⌘ K
into a filter.
**Search by target when names drift.** Monitors get renamed; the domain
they check rarely does.
**Collapse the sidebar on a laptop.** ⌘ B gives the
response-time charts the full width, and the chords keep working with the
sidebar hidden.
**Chords need an empty focus.** If g m types "gm"
into a search box, press Esc first. Shortcuts are ignored inside
text fields and open dialogs on purpose, so they never eat a character you
meant to type.
The complete list, kept in step with the dashboard, is on the
[keyboard shortcuts](/docs/reference/keyboard-shortcuts) docs page.
---
Canonical page: https://watchfor.io/blog/command-palette-keyboard-shortcuts · All articles: https://watchfor.io/blog/all.md · Site guide: https://watchfor.io/llms.txt