Finding your way around

The window is the same shape everywhere: a sidebar of domains on the left, a bar across the top carrying the scope you are working in, and one screen in the middle that is either a list or one object’s detail. The app opens on Overview › Cluster summary.

The sidebar

The sidebar holds seven domains. Each one collapses; they all start open, and navigating to a screen inside a collapsed domain opens it again so the current item is never hidden.

Domain	What it holds
Overview	Cluster summary, Nodes, Namespaces, Events stream, Quotas, Limits, Priority Classes, Leases, Runtime Classes
Workloads	COMPUTE: Pods, Deployments, Stateful Sets, Daemon Sets, Replica Sets, Replication Controllers. BATCH: Jobs, Cron Jobs. CONFIG: Config Maps, Secrets, Autoscalers, Disruption Budgets
Network	TRAFFIC: Services, Ingresses, Endpoints, Ingress Classes. POLICY: Network Policies
Storage	Volumes, Claims, Storage Classes, Snapshots. CSI: CSI Drivers, CSI Nodes, Storage Capacity
Access	IDENTITY: Service Accounts. ROLES: Roles, Role Bindings, Cluster Roles, Cluster Role Bindings
Add-ons	CRDs. ADMISSION: Mutating Webhooks, Validating Webhooks, Admission Policies. API SERVER: API Services, Flow Schemas
Helm	Releases, Charts

The lightning bolt beside the app’s name opens Quick actions, the command palette; its tooltip names the keys, ⌘K or Ctrl+K. Supported resource kinds maps every kind to its place here.

The top bar

From left to right:

• Back and Forward step through the screens you have visited.
• The context selector says which cluster you are on. The dot beside the name carries its health: “Cluster reachable, all nodes ready”, “Cluster unreachable or nodes not ready”, or “No active cluster”. A context the kubeconfig cannot back is struck through in the list and marked “Unusable: names a missing cluster or user”.
• The namespace selector scopes every namespaced list to one namespace or to All namespaces, with a “Filter namespaces…” box for long lists. It shows names only; it never counts pods beside them, because that would be a whole-cluster pod list dressed as a label.
• A connection notice appears here when the kubeconfig will not load or the context is unusable. See connecting a cluster.
• Breadcrumbs: the sidebar item you are under, then the namespace and name of the object you have open. The first crumb links back to the list. A name too long for the bar is cut in the middle, keeping its end, where names that start alike differ; holding the pointer over it shows the whole name.
• The port forwards button, shown once there is a forward to list, opens every forward in one place wherever you started it. See port forwarding.
• The update pill, shown only when there is something to say about an update: “Update available”, “Downloading N%”, “Restart to update” or “Update failed”. See updates.
• Create resource opens the Create screen.
• The Settings gear opens Settings, and is lit while you are in it. Its tooltip names the keys, ⌘, or Ctrl+,.

On a narrow window the bar gives way in steps rather than running anything under the controls on its right: the breadcrumb drops the namespace and the crumbs between its first and its last two, then the first crumb keeps only its icon; the update pill shows only its icon; Create resource becomes a +; and the context and namespace names are cut short. Each still says what it is when the pointer rests on it.

Switching context or namespace resets every cluster query, so screens go back to loading rather than showing the previous scope’s rows. If you are on a detail page, the app takes you back to its list first, because the object you were looking at belongs to the scope you are leaving. A context switch also stops every port forward.

The command palette

⌘K or Ctrl+K opens Quick actions, on every platform. Type to filter:

• Contexts and Namespaces switch scope, as the top bar’s selectors do.
• Actions: Create resource; Install a chart…, which asks for a chart from a configured repository and opens its install screen; Check for updates, which starts a check and opens Settings, where the result shows; and Keyboard shortcuts, which opens the cheat sheet.
• Then every screen, grouped by domain, with Settings last.

Contexts and namespaces come first, then the actions, then every screen by domain.

? opens a cheat sheet of the app’s own keys: ⌘1 to ⌘7 (Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+7) for the seven domains, ⌘R or Ctrl+R to refresh the screen, / for its search box, and back and forward. Those and the keys of the detail tabs and the editors are listed under keyboard shortcuts, and moving through the window with Tab or a screen reader under accessibility.

List screens

A list asks for one thing: its kind, in its namespace. The search box narrows the rows already on screen against the columns on screen — nothing about it reaches the API server, so it is instant and costs the cluster nothing. A header click sorts, and the Columns menu hides what you do not need.

The footer counts the results and says “live” while the list is following a watch.

Rows render only where they are in view, so a list costs the size of your window rather than the size of your cluster. Resource lists covers selection, export and bulk delete.

Detail screens

A header naming the object, with its status and actions (Refresh, Edit, Delete and any the kind adds), over a row of tabs in groups a thin divider sets apart:

• What the object is doing, on every kind: usually Overview and Events, plus what the kind has to watch, such as a pod’s Logs and Related tabs or a workload’s Pods and Logs.
• What it is, on every kind: usually Manifest and Labels, plus Describe on pods and nodes and a pod’s Network tab, where its port forwards are started.
• Shell, on pods only, in a group of its own at the end.

A few kinds add a group of their own between the first two: Entries on ConfigMaps and Keys on Secrets; Ports, Endpoints and Selector on Services; Rules and TLS on Ingresses; and Status, History and Replica Sets on Deployments. There is no metrics tab; usage is shown on the Overview, whose cards share the width between them however many a kind has.

The arrow keys move between tabs once one has focus. Tabs that hold something you would not want to lose — a pod’s Logs and Network tabs, and every Manifest tab — stay mounted when you switch away, so a follow, a forward or an edit survives. The Shell tab deliberately does not, so merely opening a pod’s page never execs into it. Detail pages goes through the shared tabs.

Next

Your first five minutes puts this to use.