Layout and navigation

Use Tab to move focus, Return to edit a field, Escape to leave it, and Ctrl+P to find an action in the command palette. F1 opens keyboard help. Start with Your first request if you have not opened a collection yet.

Panes

The main Noodle view has four panes:

Pane	Description
Sidebar	Collection tree with folders and requests
URL bar	Edit the method and URL. Tab switches between them; Send runs the request.
Request	Request detail view with inline editing
Response	Response rendering (idle / sending / done / error)

Focus

Press Tab / Shift+Tab to cycle focus through sidebar → URL bar → request → response. The active pane gets a cyan border with a ▸ prefix in its title. When the URL bar is focused, Tab cycles between the HTTP method selector and the URL text field. Folder view has sidebar and folder panes; the environment editor has environment sidebar, header, and variable panes; and the cookie jar has domain sidebar and cookie list panes.

Layout Modes

Press Ctrl+L to toggle between:

• Stacked: panes stack vertically
• Side-by-side: request and response split horizontally

Press F2 to expand the focused pane to full width.

Resize with the mouse

Drag the divider after the sidebar to change the collection tree width. Drag the boundary between the request and response panes to divide the remaining space. The boundary moves vertically in stacked mode and horizontally in side-by-side mode.

Each layout keeps its own request/response proportion for the current session. Double-click the sidebar divider to restore its default width, or double-click the request/response divider to return to an even split. Noodle adjusts minimum pane widths when the terminal becomes narrow, then restores the preferred sizes when space returns.

Editing

The request pane has two editing modes:

• Field browse: navigate between fields with arrow keys
• Edit: modify a field value (enter via Return, exit via Escape)

When the collection directory is read-only (browse or empty mode), the request pane is view-only. Initialize the directory from the command palette to enable editing.

Status Bar

The footer bar runs along the bottom of the TUI and shows three segments:

• Left: active environment name with its configured color badge
• Center-right: keyboard shortcut hints – only the most-used actions are shown, and hints adapt to terminal width by hiding when space is tight
• Far right: Noodle v{version} branding in the primary color

Shortcut hints use your custom keybindings from ~/.config/noodle/keybinds.yml. The send, save, palette, jump, and help keys always appear; narrower terminals drop additional hints while keeping the branding visible.