Command Palette: Put Plugin Name in Subtitle

Use case or problem

Commands in the command palette are quite long. Mostly this results from the plugin-name being prepended to the command name. Especially annoying with commands from a plugin with a long name.

Proposed solution

Display only the actual command name in the title. Put the plugin-name into a subtitle, maybe with a slightly smaller font and greyed out or something. (However, still keep the plugin name as matches for the search query, please. :slight_smile: )

22 Likes

This would be great! the plugin name inline with the command name is visually confusing.

I would also greatly appreciate this for one of my plugins.

Agreed!

That’s would be much visual and organic.

Agreed!

Great idea!

1 Like

I tried it but someone pointed out that this makes the list more difficult to scan:

1 Like

I think the best middle ground might be separating the title of the plugin into it’s own element to edit it with CSS (Recoloring/renaming/etc).

1 Like

Hmm, to be honest, I find the first one better to scan. But that might be my personal preference, though :thinking:

It might also be the emphasis of the search query in the hits that make it a bit harder to scan, as they move the focus of your eyes to that, even though it’s not totally necessary – As far as I can tell, most launcher apps do not bold the search query, for example.

Nevertheless, scannability is basically a CSS issue. Maybe indenting the subtitles or reducing the subtitle font size even further would make a difference? Or even an option to only show the subtitle on selection/hover?

It might be better to have the plugin name out to the right side of the view, so that everything is one line but the plugin name isn’t the first thing you see when you scan it. Something like

, but obviously with text for all the search entries. (Forgive the bad mockup, I am obviously not a graphic designer).

4 Likes

When scanning I basically move my eyes to the colon and start there, as if it were a column in a table.

Whereas if they alternate along the vertical I have to mentally filter out every other line which is harder for me to do.

Plus the first version takes up so much more space that there’s less that can fit somewhere I can actually scan.

1 Like

great solution and avoid the plugin named from being bolded when it matches the characters with css

I like this solution!

I think this one is the best solution, as it allows you to scan for commands (looking at the left) or scanning for plugins (looking at the right).

It works well if hotkey commands don’t show at the right end. In some cases they do. We will provide more flexibility to change it via CSS so you can either put it at top, bottom, or right.

5 Likes

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