Menu bar

mnml paints a VS Code-style menu bar on the chrome row above the bufferline. Ten menus: a leading brand menu, then File / Edit / Selection / View / Go / Run / Terminal / Window / Help. Each entry dispatches an existing palette command — the menu bar is pure presentation on top of the command registry, not a parallel dispatcher.

The point isn’t discoverability alone (the palette does that too) — it’s giving people a mouse path and a keyboard-accelerator path that maps to muscle memory from other editors. Alt+F for File, F10 to summon, click a word to drop, arrow around, Enter to fire.

Visibility mode

Set once in config; three values:

[ui]
menu_bar = "always"    # default — words always visible on the chrome row
# menu_bar = "auto"    # hidden until summoned via Alt+letter, F10, or mouse-at-top
# menu_bar = "hidden"  # never visible; palette-only flow

Cycle at runtime via the palette command view.menu_bar_cycle, or from the View menu itself (Cycle menu bar (always / auto / hidden)).

"hidden" disables both the paint and the Alt+letter / F10 accelerators — if you want the chrome row back completely, this is the setting.

Keyboard

Key	Effect
Alt+<letter>	Open the menu whose label starts with <letter> (case-insensitive). Alt+F → File, Alt+V → View, Alt+M → brand menu.
F10	Open the first alphabetic menu (skips the brand menu whose label leads with a Nerd Font glyph).
← / →	Cycle to the previous / next menu (wraps).
↑ / ↓	Move highlight up / down within the open dropdown (skips separators).
Enter	Fire the highlighted item’s command.
<letter>	Type-ahead: jump highlight to the next item starting with <letter>. Repeat presses cycle through matches (highlight-only) before Enter commits.
Esc	Close without firing.

Two rules are worth calling out because they cut real footguns:

Alt+letter reaches clipped menus

At narrow terminal widths (roughly under ~140 columns), menu words that don’t fit before the centered workspace-chip cluster get clipped off the chrome row. The dropdown still paints — at a fallback origin just right of the last visible menu word — so Alt+V, Alt+G, Alt+R, Alt+T, Alt+W, Alt+H all work regardless of whether their parent word is drawn. Arrow-nav also walks through every menu, not just the visible ones.

This wasn’t the case before 2026-08-09: the prior gate silently no-op’d on any invisible menu, so on a 120-column terminal the last six of the ten menus were unreachable from the keyboard. Now: every menu is one Alt-chord away at any width.

Alt+letter is inert while an overlay is open

If a picker, prompt, settings overlay, workspace picker, no-pane cmdline, or the vim : cmdline is up, Alt+letter falls through to the overlay instead of dropping a menu on top of it. That matches VS Code’s behavior — a keyboard chord doesn’t stack a new modal over an existing input.

Same rule for the mouse: clicking a menu word while a picker is open closes the picker and opens the menu, rather than layering both.

Ctrl+chord while a menu is open closes the menu and runs the chord

Ctrl+P / Ctrl+Shift+P / F1 / any global chord fired while a menu dropdown is showing closes the dropdown and dispatches the chord. The prior behavior was a silent no-op (the menu-key handler didn’t recognize Ctrl+letter, and the accelerator gate refused because a menu was already open — nothing ever ran).

F10 defers to DAP during a debug session

When app.dap is Some (an active Debug Adapter Protocol session), F10 falls through to dap.next (step over) instead of summoning the File menu. VS Code and IntelliJ convention. Alt+F / Alt+E / other letter accelerators still reach the menus during a debug session — only bare F10 yields.

Mouse

Gesture	Effect
Click a menu word	Drop the dropdown below it.
Click an item	Fire the item’s command and close the dropdown.
Click a submenu row	Open the submenu panel to the right of the parent.
Click outside	Close without firing.
Hover a word while another menu is open	Switch which menu is dropped (matches VS Code).

Each word on the chrome row is padded to " Label " — a 2-cell click target on either side so trackpad users hit it without precision aiming.

The menus

Brand menu (❯_ mnml)

The leading menu, styled like the Apple menu on macOS. Four rows:

Row	Command
About mnml…	view.about
Settings…	view.settings
Quit mnml	app.quit

Alt+M opens it (matching the first alphabetic character of the label).

File

The full new / open / save / close surface. Recent files render as a submenu populated live from app.recent_files (cap 10) — when the list is empty, the row reads (no recent files).

Row	Command
New file	file.new
Open file…	picker.files
Add folder to workspace…	view.add_workspace
Open recent file ▸	(submenu — up to 10 recent + Clear recent files)
Switch workspace…	view.switch_workspace
Save	file.save
Save all	file.save_all
Close tab	buffer.close
Settings…	view.settings
Quit	app.quit

There’s no Open recent file (picker)… row — Ctrl+R covers that path independently.

Edit

Find + replace, in-buffer and across the workspace.

Row	Command
Find…	find.find
Find next	find.next
Find previous	find.prev
Replace…	find.replace
Find in files…	find.grep
Replace in files…	find.grep_replace

Selection

Selection expansion + multi-cursor. All rows fire editor operations that work identically in both vim and standard input modes.

Row	Command
Expand selection	lsp.selection_expand
Shrink selection	lsp.selection_shrink
Add cursor above	editor.add_cursor_above
Add cursor below	editor.add_cursor_below
Add cursor at next match	editor.add_cursor_at_next_word
Select all occurrences	editor.select_all_occurrences
Clear extra cursors	editor.clear_extra_cursors

View

Toggles for the panels, chrome, and theme. This menu grew the most in the 2026-08-09 sweep — new rows for hover-help and workspace dots landed alongside a rename and a deletion.

Row	Command
Command palette	view.discovery
Toggle left panel	view.toggle_tree
Toggle right panel	view.toggle_right_panel
Cycle menu bar (always / auto / hidden)	view.menu_bar_cycle
Toggle word wrap	view.toggle_wrap
Toggle full screen	view.fullscreen
Toggle hover-help strip	view.toggle_hover_help
Toggle workspace dots	view.toggle_workspace_dots
Commands reference…	view.commands_reference
Pick theme…	theme.pick
Toggle theme	theme.toggle

Renames + removals in this menu:

• Toggle left panel — was Toggle file tree. The panel hosts Git / Integrations / Agents / HTTP / Findings depending on activity-bar selection, so the label was misleading. The EC02 codicon matches the sidebar-toggle chip in the palette bar.
• Toggle bufferline — removed. It only affected the launcher-cluster row on the empty welcome screen (which the welcome body renders anyway); the toggle was inert. Deleted alongside the bufferline_visible field and :set [no]bufferline ex-arms.
• Toggle hover-help strip — toggles the Ableton-style info box docked to the bottom of the left panel. See Hover-help for the full surface.
• Toggle workspace dots — toggles the ● / ○ markers on workspace-root rows in the tree. See Workspaces → Workspace dots.

Go

Navigation. The Go-to-line + Go-to-definition rows lead with a 3-space spacer because no confidently-correct Nerd Font glyph matches “jump to line” cleanly — icons only land where the glyph reads unambiguously as the action.

Row	Command
Go to file…	view.discovery
Go to line…	editor.goto_line
Go to definition	lsp.peek_definition
Previous buffer	buffer.prev
Next buffer	buffer.next
Last buffer	buffer.last

Run

The DAP surface. Step-in / step-out use F103 / F102 (fa-angle-double-down / -up) rather than single arrows so the chevron pair reads as “descend into a frame” vs. “ascend out of one” — matching VS Code’s convention.

Row	Command
Start debugging	dap.run
Toggle breakpoint	dap.toggle_breakpoint
Conditional breakpoint…	dap.toggle_breakpoint_conditional
Step in	dap.step_in
Step out	dap.step_out
Step back	dap.step_back

Bare F-key chords (F5 start, F9 toggle, F10 step over, F11 step in, Shift+F11 step out) fire the same commands directly during an active session.

Terminal

Pty pane spawns and management.

Row	Command
New terminal (split below)	term.shell
Toggle scratch terminal	term.scratch_toggle
Rename terminal	term.rename

Window

The biggest menu — tabs, splits, layout reshape, focus movement, and the AI-grid layout toggle. Grouped by separators (menu items are flat; no submenu nesting yet).

Reopen / close / pin:

Row	Command
Reopen closed tab	buffer.reopen
Close other tabs	view.close_others
Pin / unpin tab	buffer.pin_toggle

Splits — the icons here (EB56 split-right, EB57 split-down) match the H/V chips in the top-right cluster so the menu item and the toolbar icon read as the same control:

Row	Command
Split right	view.split_right
Split down	view.split_down
Close split	view.close_split
Equalize splits	view.equalize_splits
Auto-equalize on split / close (toggle)	view.toggle_auto_equalize_splits

Layout reshape — reversible via each other:

Row	Command
Merge splits into tabs	layout.merge_to_tabs
Spread tabs into splits	layout.spread_to_splits

Resize + focus:

Row	Command
Grow split width	view.split_grow_width
Grow split height	view.split_grow_height
Focus split left	view.focus_left
Focus split right	view.focus_right
Focus split up	view.focus_up
Focus split down	view.focus_down

AI-grid layout toggle — same commands the palette-bar AI chip menu fires:

Row	Command
AI layout: Grid (splits)	view.ai_layout_grid
AI layout: Tabs (stack in leaf)	view.ai_layout_tabs

Restart:

Row	Command
Restart mnml	app.restart

Help

Docs + welcome + about.

Row	Command
Welcome	view.welcome
Keybindings & help	view.help
Commands reference…	view.commands_reference
About mnml	view.about

Glyphs

Every menu item leads with a Nerd Font glyph or a 3-space spacer that preserves alignment. The rule: an icon appears only where a widely-recognized glyph matches the action semantically; otherwise the row leads with a spacer.

For example the File menu uses F0193 (single floppy) for Save but skips an icon for Save all — the closest match (F0224 / trash-like glyphs) reads wrong. Similarly the Go menu’s “Go to line…” and “Go to definition” rows lead with spacers because no Nerd Font glyph is a confidently-correct fit for “jump to line”.

Where a glyph doesn’t render (missing from the terminal’s font-codepoint-map), it tofus as an empty box — the same width as the intended glyph, so alignment is preserved. To audit which manifest glyphs won’t render on your system, see integrations.audit_glyphs.

Menu items from installed integrations

Any installed integration whose manifest declares [[menu_bar]] entries contributes rows to the menu bar (via path = "File > Send via Slack" slash-separated addresses). See Launcher manifests → menu-bar entries for the schema.

Next

• Hover-help — the info box the View menu’s hover-help toggle drives
• Workspaces & the file rail — the workspace dots the View menu’s dot toggle drives
• Right side panel — the panel the View menu’s right-panel toggle drives
• Chord chains — how leader-based chords compose alongside the menu-bar accelerators
• Cheatsheet — all chords — every default key across both input modes