screenroveCommand palette UI design: what 39 SaaS apps put behind Ctrl K
We opened the command palettes of 39 SaaS apps: 14 now pass your query to AI, 20 open on Ctrl K, 12 teach keys in a footer. What to copy, with screenshots.
A command palette used to be a launcher: type a few letters, arrow to the right row, press Enter. In 14 of the 39 SaaS products we captured, it now also offers to send whatever you typed to an AI assistant. In two of them, Netlify and ElevenLabs, the AI row is the one Enter picks.
We tagged 77 screens from 39 products as command palettes: Ctrl K launchers like Plane’s and Sentry’s, and search overlays that work the same way, like Mixpanel’s and Amplitude’s. All of them are on the command palettes pattern page. Below: what the palettes have in common, the four ways AI has moved in, what shows before you type, and the small details worth copying.
Command palette UI by the numbers
| What we counted | Products (of 39) |
|---|---|
| Opens on Ctrl K or ⌘K (recorded in our notes) | 20 |
| Dims or blurs the page behind | 24 |
| Some kind of AI entry | 14 |
| Offers to create something (New task, Add new…, Create a new project) | 14 |
| A footer of key hints | 12 |
| Recent items before you type | 9 |
| Width, median of the 29 we recorded (middle half) | 600px (500 to 672px) |
Widths are CSS pixels in a 1440px-wide window. The narrowest is Superthread’s 350px palette; the widest is Evernote’s 900px search modal, which needs the room for a second column of “Smart results”. Only two palettes leave the page undimmed: AFFiNE and Whimsical.
Fourteen palettes now talk to an AI
AI turns up in four places, and several products use more than one:
- In the placeholder (5). PostHog: “Ask PostHog AI or search experiments…”. Amplitude, Evernote and Superthread all use the same words, “Search or ask a question”. GitBook shortens it to “Ask or search…”.
- As a row built from your query (6). Netlify: “Ask Netlify AI: “domain””. Gamma: “Create new gamma about “research””. Evernote: “Ask AI Assistant”. Amplitude: “Global Agent: “weekly listeners””. ElevenLabs and Bolt turn the query into a new chat or a new project prompt.
- On a second key (4). PostHog and Sentry hand over on Tab (“Press Tab to ask AI”, “Ask Seer Tab”). Lovable uses Shift+Enter for “Start chat”, Bolt Ctrl+Enter.
- As a fixed command (4). Tana lists “AI: Chat with this content”, Eraser has an AI group, Twenty has “Ask AI” and “View Previous AI Chats”, and Netlify gives “Ask Netlify” the key n.
The real design decision is who gets the Enter key. Netlify and ElevenLabs give it to the AI: their AI row is first and highlighted as soon as you type. PostHog, Sentry, Lovable and Bolt keep Enter for the top result and put AI on a second key, so the palette still behaves like a palette for people who just want to jump to a page.
Ctrl K is the default, and one tip still says ⌘
20 of the 39 palettes open on Ctrl K or ⌘K according to our notes. CodeSandbox keeps VS Code’s F1. The others open from a search field or icon: Amplitude from the sidebar, Superthread from a sidebar search icon, and Render by turning its whole top bar into the search field rather than opening a modal.
Most products print the right modifier for the machine. Gamma does not. In the same desktop browser where PostHog, Netlify and Sentry show “Ctrl K”, Gamma’s footer tip and sidebar both say ⌘+K.
What shows before you type
An empty palette is a menu, and products fill it differently. Plane leads with a Create group of eight “New …” commands, each with a two-key shortcut such as “N then I”. Every time you open it, it teaches you how not to need it.
Four palettes start with the page you are on. Sentry’s first group is named after the current view, “Issues Feed”, with Filter by, Mark all issues as, Sort by and Save as new view, and only then “Go to…”. Twenty opens on “View: All People” and “Object: People”, Eraser shows a “Dashboard” context chip in the field, and Tana anchors its command line under the bullet you have selected.
Nine palettes show recent items before you type, PostHog with relative times (“53 min ago”), AFFiNE and Taskade with recent docs and projects. 14 offer to create something. Whimsical shows only six group names to drill into, Team, Edit, Team, Workspace, View and Help, and the duplicate “Team” is really in the app.
Results: grouped, marked and sometimes previewed
Once you type, most palettes regroup the results by type and mark the match. PostHog counts them (“11 results”) and groups Recents, Settings, Insights, Dashboards and Feature flags. Neon and Rive mark the matched text in bold or blue. Three add a preview pane beside the list: Lovable (owner, status and three dates), fal (the model’s cover, tags and endpoint id with a copy button) and Maze (the matched study block).
Taskade’s palette is honest about its limits. Its quick search matches project names only, and when “marketing” finds nothing, the footer offers to “Search all projects, comments and workspaces for “marketing”” on Ctrl Enter.
The footer teaches the keys
12 palettes end in a strip of key hints. The basics are the same everywhere: arrows to move, Enter to select, Esc to close, as in Netlify’s “↑↓ to navigate, ↵ to select, esc to close”. The useful extras are the second actions: open in a new tab or window (PostHog, Sentry, Evernote), copy a link (Evernote’s Ctrl + L), open in the browser (Rive) and ask AI (PostHog).
Palettes are not the only command menu. 13 of the products also have a slash menu inside their editor, and AI got there too: AFFiNE puts “Ask AI” at the top, Craft starts with “Assistant”, Taskade opens on an AI section, Superlist lists “Make with AI” and Sanity leads with an AI “Instruction”.
What to steal
- Decide who gets Enter. If people mostly use the palette to jump, keep Enter for the top result and put AI on Tab or Shift+Enter, as PostHog and Lovable do. Give Enter to AI only if asking is the main job.
- Put the AI key in the field, not just the footer. “Press Tab to ask AI” next to the cursor is seen; a footer hint is often not.
- Lead with the current page. Sentry’s “Issues Feed” group answers “what can I do here?” before “where can I go?”.
- Show shortcuts on every row. Plane’s “N then I” turns the palette into a shortcut lesson.
- Detect the platform. Print Ctrl on Windows and Linux, ⌘ on a Mac.
- Say what search covers. If you only match names, say so and offer a wider search, as Taskade does.
- Size for content. Around 600px suits a single list; go wider only for a preview pane or a second column.
How we counted
We captured these screens in desktop browsers at 1440 by 900 with research accounts, between September and October 2026. Each screen has notes recorded at capture; the counts above come from those notes, sorted by hand, and we checked the screens we quote against the screenshots. A feature we did not see is not counted, so the shortcut count is a floor: a palette we opened by clicking may also have a key. Research accounts were new and mostly empty, so recents and results lists are short. We record what the palettes show, not how often people use them.
Building one? Browse the command palettes and keyboard shortcut hints, or connect the Screenrove MCP server and ask your agent for “command palettes with an AI row” before you design your own.