Microsoft announces Command Palette for quick access to different features in Edge

Microsoft has announced a new experimental feature in the Edge browser. It is a command bar that offers quick access to various tools and actions in Microsoft Edge. The company calls it “DevTools Command Palette,” and the feature is now available for testing in the Canary channel.

Although Microsoft revealed Command Palette only today, users spotted the first traces of the feature in late June 2022. It was partially available to some Edge Insiders in the Canary channel behind an experimental flag. Now every insider can access Command Palette in Edge 105 Canary.

It is worth noting that the feature remains experimental, so you need to enable it using a corresponding “flag” on the edge://flags page. Here is how to do that:

1. Update your Edge Canary to the latest version available by navigating to edge://settings/help.
2. Go to edge://flags and type Command Palette.
3. Set the corresponding flag to “Enabled” and restart the browser.

Now, you can access Command Palette by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Space. You can type different commands and actions, such as “Clear browsing history,” “Create InPrivate window,” etc. Also, you can type generic words to check out related commands. For example, “tabs,” “bookmark,” or “dev.”

Here is how Microsoft describes Command Palette in the official documentation:

Use Command Palette to quickly access various Microsoft Edge browser commands and DevTools commands from the keyboard.

Using Command Palette, you can directly access productivity and developer features that normally require clicking through several menus or using a series of keyboard shortcuts.

If you want to try Command Palette and other early features, which are not ready for public release, go to the official Edge Insider website to download Edge Canary. Just keep in mind that using Canary as your primary browser is not a good idea because the channel often suffers from quite nasty bugs. Fortunately, you can run Edge Canary alongside the stable release without issues.

Microsoft announces Command Palette for quick access to different features in Edge