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Difference Between Command Palette and Run

Open SamGreenwood1 opened this issue 8 months ago • 5 comments

Provide a description of requested docs changes

What's the difference between PowerToys Run and the PowerToys Command Palette? I can't find where its explained, it seems like the CP is an upgraded version of Run but why do both exist? seems like the basically serve the same function.What is the difference between PowerToys Run and the PowerToys Command Palette? I can't find an explanation anywhere. It seems like the Command Palette is an upgraded version of Run, but why do both exist? They appear to serve the same function.

SamGreenwood1 avatar Apr 14 '25 23:04 SamGreenwood1

It's just a more modern approach with the same objective

The Command Palette is intended to be the successor of PowerToys Run.

mslearn source

AucaCoyan avatar Apr 16 '25 14:04 AucaCoyan

will Command Palette eventually support plugins like Run does?

SamGreenwood1 avatar Apr 23 '25 03:04 SamGreenwood1

It already does! I have one for github, and one for everything

AucaCoyan avatar Apr 23 '25 10:04 AucaCoyan

Yep. While I don't have time for a longer answer now - I'll just chime in that extensibility is a primary goal for Command Palette. We want to make finding, installing, and authoring extensions to be a core part of the experience.

You should be able to search for extensions right from the palette

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zadjii-msft avatar Apr 23 '25 11:04 zadjii-msft

Yep. While I don't have time for a longer answer now - I'll just chime in that extensibility is a primary goal for Command Palette. We want to make finding, installing, and authoring extensions to be a core part of the experience.

You should be able to search for extensions right from the palette

Thank you @zadjii-msft. How hard do you reckon migrating Powertoys Run's "Plugins" into extensions is? Take for example, the Visual Studio Code plugin:

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In Command Palette, there are no extensions yet for this functionality using the search bar you showed

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Do you foresee this work as being writing native exentions from scratch again or is there a way to leverage the previous plugins?

ScottWilliamAnderson avatar Jun 22 '25 20:06 ScottWilliamAnderson

Overall, the work isn't totally trivial, but it's usually not super complicated. You can usually get something working pretty fast, and then incrementally build a better cmdpal-first version on top of that with a bit more work.

FWIW, there's actually already two extensions for VS code workspaces:

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(I suspect that winget matches the whole string literal, not just word-by-word, which is why those didn't show up for "visual studio code")

zadjii-msft avatar Jun 30 '25 11:06 zadjii-msft