# Interface > A tour of vivePDF's top bar, Tools menu, command palette, tabs, tab groups, windows and the side panels in the Viewer. URL: https://vivepdf.com/en/docs/interface/ Last updated: 2026-10-18 Everything in vivePDF starts from one bar along the top of the window. The **Home**, **Viewer**, **Pages** and **Studio** buttons on the left switch between workspaces, and the **Tools** and **Help** menus hold the rest. The documents you open sit in tabs, which you can group or move into separate windows. ## The top bar The vivePDF logo and the four workspaces sit on the left of the bar: - **Home**: recent documents, collections and quick tools. **Customize home** lets you rearrange its sections. - **Viewer**: where you read, search and mark up documents. See [Open and read a PDF](https://vivepdf.com/en/docs/open-and-read/). - **Pages**: the page organizer, showing every page of the open document as a thumbnail. See [Organise pages](https://vivepdf.com/en/docs/pages/). - **Studio**: an editor for writing a document or making a design from a blank page. On the right you will find the search box that opens the command palette, the theme button (it switches between light and dark), the **Language** menu, **Settings** (the gear icon) and the **Open PDF** button. When a new version is ready, a green update button appears to the left of the search box. As the window gets narrower the bar compacts itself: labels go first, then the menus turn into icons, so search, settings and **Open PDF** stay visible at any width. ## The Tools menu Click **Tools** and the tools open in six groups: - **Page layout**: Merge, Split, Rename - **Optimisation**: Compress, OCR, Scans, Compare, Accessibility, Print check, PDF/A archive, Batch, Watched folders - **To PDF**: Create PDF - **From PDF**: Convert - **Content editing**: Edit, QR & barcodes, Answer sheets, Forms - **Security**: Security, Sign **Show all** at the bottom of the menu opens the catalogue of every tool with a search box; tools that have no line of their own in the menu, such as rotating pages or adding a watermark, are listed there. **Search in folders** searches the text of every PDF in the folders you have indexed and jumps straight to the page. The full list is on the [Tools](https://vivepdf.com/en/docs/tools/) page. ## The command palette Press `Ctrl+K`, or click the **Search tools, pages or documents** box in the top bar, to open the command palette. Type the name of a tool, a settings section or an open document, pick it with the arrow keys and press `Enter`. Start your search with a symbol to narrow the palette to one kind of result: - `>` shows only actions, such as **New window**, **PDF from clipboard** or **Check for updates**. - `/` searches pages and settings sections. - `@` searches open documents and recent files. - `#` followed by a number goes to that page of the open document. ## The Help menu The **Help** menu holds **Help topics**, **Keyboard shortcuts (F1)**, **What's new** and **Privacy**. Below them come **Report a bug**, **Suggest a feature**, **Open log folder** and **Save support bundle…**, and at the bottom **Check for updates** and **About**. > **Shortcuts for this screen** > > Wherever you are, `F1` or `Ctrl+/` shows the shortcuts for that screen, and `Shift+F1` opens its help topic. The full list is on the [Keyboard shortcuts](https://vivepdf.com/en/docs/shortcuts/) page. ## Tabs and tab groups Every document you open gets its own tab above the Viewer; the same tabs also appear in Pages. Drag a tab to change its place, or move it with `Ctrl+Shift+←`/`→`. `Ctrl+W` closes the active document. Right-click a tab for options such as **Close others**, **Close all**, **Copy path**, **Copy file name**, **Show in folder** and **Open beside current document**. **Add to new group** in the same menu groups tabs the way a web browser does: - Click the name chip in front of a group to collapse or expand it, double-click it to rename the group, and drag it to move the whole group. - The group menu offers **Colour** (13 colours), **Ungroup**, **Close the group's documents**, **Open a document in this group** and **Save as collection**. - A group saved as a collection appears under **Collections** on Home, where you can later reopen all its files as one tab group. ## Windows `Ctrl+Shift+N` opens an empty new window. To give a document a window of its own, drag its tab out of the window and let go, or choose **Move to new window** from the tab menu; **Move group to new window** in the group menu moves all of the group's documents to a new window. A document with unsaved changes stays in its window until you save it. Settings, theme, language and recent files are shared by every window. ## Side panels in the Viewer In the Viewer, a vertical strip of buttons runs down each side of the page. The **Navigation** strip on the left opens the **Thumbnails**, **Outline** and **Attachments** panels. A **Signatures** button appears when the document is signed, and **Layers** when it has layers. The **Tools** strip on the right starts with **Comments**, **Annotate / mark up**, **Edit** and **Presentation tools**. Then come **Reading mode**, **Read aloud**, **Page colours** and **Document info**. At the bottom of the strip are the page number box, **Rotate**, the **Page display** menu and the zoom buttons. Each button opens and closes its own panel. You can choose which panels are ready when a document opens in **Settings › Viewer**; for the other settings see [Settings and privacy](https://vivepdf.com/en/docs/settings-privacy/).