Finding your way around

The sidebar

The header shows the connection state, the context, the number of nodes and the current namespace. Below it, every kind is grouped into eight sections, each with its kubectl short name on the right:

Section	Contents
Workloads	Pods, Deployments, Replica Sets, Stateful Sets, Daemon Sets, Jobs, Cron Jobs
Network	Services, Endpoints, Endpoint Slices, Ingresses, Ingress Classes, Port Forwards
Configuration	Config Maps, Secrets
Scaling	HPA, VPA, WPA
Storage	Persistent Volumes, Persistent Volume Claims, Storage Classes, CSI Drivers, Volume Attachments
RBAC	Service Accounts, Roles, Role Bindings, Cluster Roles, Cluster Role Bindings
Policy	Network Policies, Resource Quotas, Limit Ranges, Pod Disruption Budgets, Mutating and Validating Webhooks
Cluster	Overview, Problems, Nodes, Namespaces, Events, Priority Classes, Runtime Classes, Leases, Helm Releases, Topology, Security, Cost

Your custom resources follow, one section per API group, discovered when you connect.

• Filter resources… at the top narrows the list as you type.
• Click a section header to collapse it. kdashboard remembers which ones you collapsed.
• ⌘B collapses the sidebar to a column of icons.

Pin a resource

Right-click any row → Pin to Sidebar. The resource appears in a Pinned section at the top of the sidebar, one click away from anywhere. Hover it and click the X, or choose Unpin from Sidebar, to remove it.

Tabs

Every table, resource, log stream and shell you open is a tab. The tab bar appears as soon as you have more than one.

• Middle-click, or the X, closes a tab. ⌘W closes the current one.
• Right-click a tab for Close Others, Close to the Left, Close to the Right, Close All, Move Left and Move Right.
• With many tabs open the bar scrolls; the chevron at its right end lists them all.

Tabs are restored when you restart the app, along with their search, filters and sort order. If a resource no longer exists, its tab says so. Tabs are not kept across a context switch.

The command palette

⌘K opens it; Esc closes it. ↑ ↓ move, ⏎ runs.

What you can type:

Type	To
A resource name — two characters or more	Find it anywhere in the cluster
A kind — deployments, ingress	Jump to its table. Custom resources too.
A context or namespace name	Switch to it
An action — logs, scale, restart, delete	Run it on the selected resource
settings, agent, refresh	App commands

Narrow a cluster search

Two prefixes narrow a search by name:

Prefix	Example
ns: or namespace:	ns:billing payments
kind:, k: or type:	k:svc api · kind:deploy ns:prod web

kind: takes the plural, the kubectl short name, or the Kind: deployments, deploy and Deployment are the same. A prefix on its own — ns:billing — lists everything in scope.

Exact names rank first, then prefixes, then matches at the start of a word, then anything that contains the text; the current namespace is preferred. The search covers workloads, pods, services, ingresses, jobs, config maps, secrets, claims, service accounts, HPAs, nodes and namespaces, and shows the top 30 hits. Where you cannot list a kind cluster-wide, it searches the namespaces you can read instead.

The status bar

From left to right:

• the connection dot and the context name;
• the number of active port-forwards — click to open the Port Forwards view;
• the AI agent button, with a green dot while a session runs and an amber one when it is waiting for your approval;
• a bell, once you are watching something;
• on the right, the keys that work in the current view.

Going back

Esc always goes one step back: it closes a dialog or a menu, leaves Settings, blurs the search box, closes the detail, and finally clears the selection.