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Using 4Command

Right after being installed, 4Command is ready to help you navigate Joomla and speed up some common operations. You can use it on any page of the admin.

Opening 4Command dialog

Using your keyboard is the fastest way to open 4Command dialog.

Keyboard shortcut

Open 4Command at any time using its keyboard shortcut:

  • ctrl + alt + X: on most machines
  • control + command + X: on MacOs systems

You can disable, enable back of change this keyboard shortcut (in case it interferes with other applications) on the General configuration page

Administrator module

4Command also inserts an administrator module in the status bar will display a small icon you can click to open the assistant. You can **click ** on it to open the 4Command dialog instead of using the keyboard shortcut.

On Joomla 4+

On Joomla 3

The module is also used to display information messages when using 4Command without opening its main dialog.

Using the main dialog

The main 4Command dialog is a combobox: it first shows you a list of all pages and functions it can access, but then it shortens that list as you type one or more words, or parts of words.

Actions in the list include:

  • going to one of Joomla pages: Global configuration, install an extension, edit a particular module or plugin options
  • performing a Joomla existing action: clear the cache, set caching level, debug system, gzip, site offline,...
  • doing something that's not available in Joomla, at least not in one click: check-in all content, resend users activation email, switch editors, empty trashed items, view trashed items,...

It's much harder to describe in words than it is to show you - and to use, so here is a couple of quick videos instead:

Example 1: go to the extensions installation page

Example 2: go to the global configuration

Triggering an action with a shortcut

But you don't event have to open the dialog to perform some actions. Many haved built-in keyboard shortcuts (list under the "keyboard" icon when opening 4Command dialog).

Here is an example of Clearing the Joomla cache with just one shortcut. Similar shortcuts exists to empty all or some of the trashed items, check-in all content, etc

Using toolbars shortcuts

4Command transparently adds keyboard shorcuts to Joomla (and possibly other extension as well, if they use standard Joomla buttons) to speed up some common actions:

Putting it all together: use dialog and shortcuts and toolbars shortcuts

In this example we:

  • use ctrl+alt+A to go to the article manager
  • use shift+alt+N to create a new article
  • enter some content and press ctrl+S to save the article
  • open 4Command dialog with ctrl+alt+X and type mirror followed by Enter to switch to CodeMirror
  • type more content and press again ctrl+S to save
  • switch back to TinyMCE in 2 seconds
  • press shift+alt+S to Save & Close
  • Trash the article using Joomla buttons
  • open 4Command dialog with ctrl+alt+X and type trash followed by Enter to delete all trashed items

All these actions can also be done without remembering any keyboard shortcut, but instead opening 4Command dialog and typing a few letters to select the desired action.

After a while, you'll memorize the shortcuts for the actions you use most often.