After publishing an article about the vSphere Web Client Recent History Feature, I received question from a reader asking about the keyboard shortcuts that were available as part of the legacy vSphere C# Client. The reader really enjoyed these shortcuts as a way to quickly navigate between the various inventories and was wondering if similar keyboard shortcuts existed for the new vSphere Web Client? I was not able to find anything in our documentation and decided to reach out to our UE (User Experience) folks to see if they could assist.
Though we do not have every single keyboard shortcut that was available from the legacy vSphere C# Client, we actually do have quite a few and this somehow must have gotten missed during documentation (I have filed documentation bug on this). In talking to our UE folks, some of the challenges in adding the keyboard shortcuts was to find shortcuts that have not already been taken by either a web browser (vSphere Web Client is a browser application) or the Operating System used to connect to the vSphere Web Client. It was also very important if new shortcuts were added, that it would be easy to understand. As you can see this was not a trivial task at all.
The screenshot below provides a quick overview of the available keyboard shortcuts for the vSphere Web Client. Take a look at the table below for a more detailed break down of each keyboard shortcut.
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Keyboard Combination | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+Alt+s |
Quick Search |
Ctrl+Alt+Home OR Ctrl+Alt+1 |
Home Screen |
Ctrl+Alt+2 |
Virtual Infrastructure Inventory |
Ctrl+Alt+3 |
Hosts and Clusters Inventory |
Ctrl+Alt+4 |
VMs and Templates Inventory |
Ctrl+Alt+5 |
Datastores and Datastore Clusters Inventory |
Ctrl+Alt+6 |
Networking Inventory |
I was able to verify these shortcuts on both a Mac OS X system as well as a on Windows. This is something I definitely will be bookmark as a useful reference. If there are other keyboard shortcuts that you have grown to rely on in the legacy vSphere C# Client and would like to see in the new vSphere Web Client, feel free to leave a comment and I will make sure it gets to our UE folks.
Thanks William. Shortcuts/hotkeys was one of my biggest complaints on moving to the web client.
Now you have your shortcuts Josh! 🙂
I would like a fast way to boot a series of VMs from the web client. In the thick client, I believe the shortcut was Ctrl-B for booting, and Ctrl-D for shutdown. I could quickly go through the list of VMs by doing Ctrl-B, down-arrow, Ctrl-B, down-arrow, etc. for each VM.
Now after I power on a VM by clicking the Play button (no shortcut key that I know of), it pops me into another screen, and I have to navigate back to power on the next VM.
Any advice? Thanks!
Tom
This is pathetic attempt to close the gap with vSphere C# Client. Nobody cares about "not a trivial task at all", but everybody notices how inefficient and slow the vSphere Web Client is. However technically advanced the Web Client is the user experience simply is not there. Architects and decision makers behind this PITA failed spectacularly.