---
title: "Use Commentware"
description: "The three surfaces — the overlay on the page, the side panel, and the options page — and which one does what."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://commentware.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Use Commentware

import OverlayToolbar from "../../../components/OverlayToolbar.astro";

These pages are what you do with Commentware in the browser: [comment on a
page](/docs/using/comments/), [move a pin and edit its
screenshot](/docs/using/pins/), [find a comment](/docs/using/finding/), [read and
silence notifications](/docs/using/notifications/), [dictate a
comment](/docs/using/dictation/), [use comments over a
dialog](/docs/using/modes/), and [export and import
threads](/docs/using/export/). They happen on three surfaces, and knowing which
is which saves looking for a control on the surface that cannot have it.

## The overlay on the page

Press `Alt+C` — `⌥C` on a Mac — and the comment overlay opens over whatever you
are looking at. This is the only surface that has the page, so it is the only
one that can place a pin, drag one onto a different element, photograph the page
or mark that screenshot up. [Comment on a page](/docs/using/comments/) covers
using it.

The toolbar is a small strip you can drag anywhere, and each control is named by
its tooltip. The notch on the left is not a control — it is where you take hold
of the strip to move it.

The toolbar is a drag handle and then seven controls, left to right:

1. **Leave a comment** — Arms the crosshair, then you pick a spot. The mark rather than a speech bubble, and the only filled control: there is one primary action here.
2. **Which project you are in** — A folder when this browser is in none, and that project's own avatar when it is.
3. **Which comments are drawn** — All, open, or resolved. It wears the active mode's icon, so a filter cannot be in effect without being on screen.
4. **Settings** — Opens the options page.
5. **Notifications** — Whether this browser interrupts you. The bell is crossed out when they are off.
6. **Search** — Opens the side panel with the search view on it.
7. **Hide the overlay** — The same thing the shortcut does.

## The side panel

Click the extension's toolbar icon. The panel is browser furniture rather than
part of the page, and it can hold a thread from a page you are not on. [Find a
comment](/docs/using/finding/) covers how it behaves.

## The options page

The gear in the panel's header. Everything that is not about the page in front
of you lives here:

- **Connection** — your servers, which is current, the key's user and what it
  may do, and the people on the server.
- **Projects** — create, rename, delete, the addresses each one claims, and
  moving a site from one to another.
- **Sites** — every site and its pages, most drifted first.
- **Export / Import** — saving a project's, a site's or a page's threads as a
  file, and putting such a file into a project. Experimental. See [Export and
  import threads](/docs/using/export/).
- **Notifications** — the last 50 you were sent.
- **Settings** — your display name, the keyboard shortcut, the notification
  switches, and dictation.
- **Search**, across every domain, comment and person on the server.

## One thread, two places

The thread card is the same component on the page and in the panel, so reply,
edit, delete, resolve, mention, mark-unread and dictation work identically in
both. The differences are only ever about what a surface can reach:

|                                  | Overlay | Panel |
| -------------------------------- | ----- | ----- |
| Read and write a thread          | Yes   | Yes   |
| Place a pin, or drag one         | Yes   | No    |
| Retake or draw on the screenshot | Yes   | No    |
| Hold a thread from another page  | No    | Yes   |

The two are deliberately allowed to show different threads at once. Opening one
in the panel does not move the page under you; going to the page is a separate
control.