Keyboard, Power Features, and International Support

The Command Palette

The command palette is the fastest way to navigate the Hermes Desktop app without touching the mouse. Open it with Cmd+K on macOS or Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux. A search field appears that accepts any navigation or action you can perform in the app.

Type a few letters to filter the available commands: "new session" creates a new chat, "switch profile" takes you to the profile selector, "settings providers" opens directly to the Providers pane in Settings, "install skill" opens the Skills Hub. Most actions that would require clicking through multiple menu levels are one command-palette search away.

The palette also accepts session IDs and skill names. Typing a session ID and pressing Enter navigates directly to that session. Typing a skill name shows that skill's details. For keyboard-first users who work across many sessions and profiles, the command palette is the primary navigation tool -- faster than clicking through the sidebar for any action you know the name of.

Rebindable Keyboard Shortcuts

Default keyboard shortcuts in the Desktop app cover common actions: new session, toggle preview rail, switch to previous session, open settings, and more. Every shortcut is rebindable in the Keyboard section of Settings.

Rebinding is useful when the defaults conflict with other applications you use simultaneously, or when you have muscle memory from a different tool that you want to carry over. For example, if you habitually use Cmd+N for "new document" in your IDE and find the Desktop's default meaning for that key disruptive, you can change it to something that does not conflict.

To rebind a shortcut, navigate to Settings, open the Keyboard section, click on the shortcut you want to change, and press the new key combination. The app validates that the combination is not already in use before accepting it.

Custom shortcuts persist across app updates -- the Settings panel stores them in your Hermes configuration rather than in the app bundle, so they survive app reinstallation.

Zoom Controls

The Desktop app's zoom level is adjustable in half-step increments. The standard zoom-in and zoom-out shortcuts (Cmd+Plus / Cmd+Minus on macOS, Ctrl+Plus / Ctrl+Minus on Windows/Linux) increase or decrease the UI scale in finer increments than most apps provide.

Half-step zoom increments matter in practice: a single zoom level often feels slightly too small or slightly too large, and the finer granularity lets you find the comfortable middle ground. This is especially relevant on high-DPI displays where the difference between zoom levels is more perceptible.

The zoom level is per-window and persists across app restarts. If you connect the Desktop to a remote backend from a different device with a different screen size, the zoom reverts to the default -- the zoom setting is stored locally rather than in the server-side configuration.

UI Language Switcher

The Desktop app includes a UI language switcher for international users. Currently supported languages include English (default) and Simplified Chinese, with the switcher available in the General section of Settings.

Switching language changes all app chrome: menus, panel labels, button text, status messages, and Settings panel content. Conversation content (your prompts and the agent's responses) is not affected -- the agent responds in whatever language you write to it, regardless of the UI language setting.

The language setting is per-installation, not per-profile. Switching language on a remote backend server does not change the language for clients connected to it -- each client uses its own language setting.

Power User Tips

A few features that are easy to miss but significantly improve the Desktop experience once discovered:

Drag to reorder sessions. Sessions in the sidebar can be dragged to reorder them. Pin your most-used sessions at the top by dragging them there. This persists across restarts.

Right-click on files in the browser. The file browser supports a context menu with common file operations: open in preview, copy path, open in the system file manager. Useful when you want to do something with a file the agent touched without switching to Finder or Explorer.

Preview rail keyboard navigation. When the preview rail is showing a rendered web page or a text file, standard keyboard navigation works: arrow keys scroll, Cmd+F (Ctrl+F) opens find-in-page, and Tab navigates links.

Session title editing. Click on a session's auto-generated title in the sidebar to edit it. Replace the automatic title with a descriptive name for the task. Sessions are much easier to find later with meaningful names than with the default titles based on the first few words of your prompt.

Selective Uninstall Options

When you are ready to remove Hermes, the Desktop app provides three granular uninstall options rather than a single "delete everything" action. This is intentional: the three components of your Hermes installation have different values, and you may want to keep some while removing others.

Remove the Desktop app only. Removes the Electron application shell and the React interface, but keeps the Hermes Agent runtime at ~/.hermes/ intact. The CLI and gateway continue to work. Use this if you want to continue using Hermes from the terminal but no longer need the graphical interface.

Remove the Desktop app and agent runtime. Removes the application and the Hermes Agent binary and dependencies, but keeps your configuration, session history, API keys, and skills in ~/.hermes/. Use this if you want to uninstall and reinstall cleanly without losing your data -- for troubleshooting a corrupt installation, for example.

Remove everything. Removes the app, the runtime, and all data at ~/.hermes/ including configuration, sessions, API keys, and skills. This is the clean-slate option. There is no recovery from this choice -- make sure you have backed up anything you want to keep before using it.