Glyph

Work faster in Glyph

Every command in Glyph goes through one registry, and this guide is a tour of the four surfaces built on top of it: the command palette that finds any of them by typing a few letters, the cheat sheet that lists every key at once, the keyboard-shortcuts dialog that lets you switch to a KLayout-compatible preset or remap a key of your own, and the ten stored grid presets that put a fixed snap step on the number keys. None of it changes what you can draw — it changes how many menus you have to open to draw it.

  • Time: ~10 min
  • You'll need: Glyph open on a blank document. Nothing to download, no file to load.

  1. Search for a command. Press Ctrl+K to open the command palette, then type snap. Two rows match: Snap to grid — the obvious one — and Maximise canvas (hide panels). That second row isn't a mistake: the palette's fuzzy matcher accepts s, n, a, p as a subsequence anywhere in the group + label text, not as a literal substring, and "Maxismise canvas (hide panels)" happens to spell it out in order. Every action Glyph knows about is searched this way, so a few letters in the right order are enough — you don't need the exact wording of the menu item, but an unrelated command can occasionally ride along.

    Glyph's Ctrl+K command palette filtered to the word snap, showing the View group with two results — Snap to grid and Maximise canvas (hide panels), both with their shortcuts shown on the right — plus a third, disabled Arrange result, Prune unreferenced cells…, riding along on the same fuzzy match.View full image

  2. Watch it take effect immediately. Click Snap to grid to run it — it toggles snapping, the same as pressing G. Snap is on by default, so on a fresh document this click turns it off — if the magnet is already grey by the time you get here, this same click turns it back on. Look at the toolbar behind the palette (visible in the last screenshot too): the magnet-and-chevron icon at the end of the Draw group, just left of the divider into Transform, was lit accent-orange; the instant you click, it turns grey (or the reverse, if you're turning it back on). That's the real confirmation that the toggle worked, sitting right where you clicked — not something you have to hunt for four steps later.

    Close-up of the right end of Glyph's Draw toolbar group — text and Measure (ruler) tools, then the Snap-to-grid magnet-and-chevron control — with the magnet control now grey and inactive immediately after the command ran.

  3. See it float to the top as Recent. Press Ctrl+K again with an empty search box. The command you just ran floats to the top of the list under a RECENT heading, ahead of every File command below it, so the handful of things you're actually doing today stay one keystroke away without you pinning anything.

    The Ctrl+K palette reopened with an empty query, showing a RECENT section with Snap to grid tagged recent and its G shortcut, above the regular File group of commands.View full image

  4. See every key at once. Close the palette and click the ? shortcuts button in the bottom-right of the status bar (or just press ?). This overlay lists every current binding, grouped by Tools, Draw, Edit, Arrange, View, Verify, File and Help — and it always reflects whatever keys are actually bound right now, including any preset or remap from the next step. It's titled Keyboard shortcuts, the exact same title as the dialog you're about to open — but they're two different surfaces: this one is read-only signage — its own corner label reads "Press ? to close" (Esc also dismisses it, though the overlay doesn't advertise that key), and nothing here is editable — while the dialog in the next step is where presets and remaps actually happen.

    Glyph's full keyboard-shortcuts cheat sheet overlay, showing two columns of grouped shortcut lists including Tools, Draw, Edit and View, each row pairing a key chip with its command.View full image

  5. Switch to the KLayout preset. Open File → Setup → Keyboard shortcuts… — the editable dialog the cheat sheet only displays — and change Preset from Glyph (stock) to KLayout. This preset binds only what klayout.de documents or KLayout's own menus ship — nothing invented: F2 fits the whole cell, Shift+F2 fits the selection, Ctrl+B duplicates, Ctrl+D enters the selected instance's cell, M arms Select, and the hierarchy keys. The dialog says, in its own words, "Switching preset clears your personal overrides" — which is exactly why this guide remaps a key of its own only at the very end (step 11), after switching preset, not before: doing it the other way round would switch presets and silently wipe the remap. If you ever want to undo everything this guide does, the same dialog's Reset to defaults button (next to the Preset dropdown) clears every override and returns you to Glyph (stock) in one click. The first of the KLayout preset's keys is right here: F2 now zooms to fit the whole cell (the marker stepper that used to own F2 is deliberately unbound rather than guessed into a new home).

    Glyph's Keyboard shortcuts dialog with Preset set to KLayout, a Reset to defaults button beside it, an explanatory note about overrides below, and the list of actions with the key the preset binds to each.View full image

  6. Scroll to the other five. Further down the same View group, past the ten grid-preset rows, sits the hierarchy cluster: * shows every level, 0 collapses instances to boxes, 1 shows the top level only, and + / - step the depth one level at a time. Those six, with Shift+F2, Ctrl+B, Ctrl+D and M from step 5, are the KLayout preset in full.

    The same Keyboard shortcuts dialog scrolled down to show five consecutive View rows: Hierarchy show all levels bound to asterisk, boxes only to 0, top level only to 1, one level more to plus, and one level less to minus.View full image

  7. Find the grid presets. Close the dialog and open View → Grid preset. This submenu lists ten stored snap steps, one per number key, with their live values — not Shift+1, Shift+2… as abstract labels, but the actual distance each one will apply, right now, from a fresh install: 0.001 µm up to 100.000 µm. The row just above it, Snap to grid: off, is the same toggle from step 2 — still off, still readable here too, alongside the toolbar icon. One row shows no key: with the KLayout preset on, 5.000 µm has no Shift+8, because on most keyboards Shift+8 is the * that shows every hierarchy level; the stock preset keeps it.

    Glyph's View menu with Grid preset hovered, opening a flyout submenu that starts with Grid: finer step and Grid: coarser step, then ten rows pairing a step value in micrometres — from 0.001 to 100.000 — with its Shift+1 through Shift+0 key except 5.000, which has none under the KLayout preset, and the Snap to grid row above it reading off.View full image

  8. Edit them. The same ten values live in File → Setup → Settings… → Advanced → Grid presets, each as a plain nanometre field you can type into directly. The panel explains why they're on Shift+digit rather than the bare digits: the KLayout preset you just switched to already claims 0 and 1 for hierarchy levels, so the two migrant reflexes — Clewin's number-key grid and KLayout's hierarchy keys — don't collide.

    Glyph's Settings dialog titled Settings, with the Advanced section expanded showing an Ask-before-Claude-overwrites checkbox, a Heal-CAD-imports checkbox, Grid density, a Sub-divide checkbox, then the Grid presets section: a Reset button, an explanatory note, and ten labelled Shift+1 through Shift+0 number fields showing 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 20000 and 100000 nanometres, with Hierarchy depth visible below it.View full image

  9. Apply one and watch the confirmation. Back on the canvas, open View → Grid preset again and click 1.000 µm (Shift+7). Applying a preset switches snap to that fixed step and turns snapping on: a toast pops up in the corner reading Grid 1.000 µm, and the scale bar in the canvas's bottom-right corner — a ruler whose length is always a round number of grid cells, so it is a visible trace of a step a keypress alone wouldn't otherwise leave — now reads 10 µm: ten of the new 1 µm cells at the default zoom.

    Glyph's canvas corner showing grid lines, the right-hand panel edge and the status bar for location context, with the scale bar reading 10 micrometres above its ruler and a toast reading Grid 1.000 micrometres beside it.View full image

  10. Switch again, from the palette. Press Ctrl+K, type grid preset 9 — the palette row for it is labelled Grid preset 9 — and run it — the same action Shift+9 would trigger, this time found by search instead of by key. It applies the 20 µm preset (Shift+9): a second toast appears below the first, reading Grid 20.000 µm, and the scale bar now reads 20 µm — at the same zoom a visibly longer bar for a larger step, the before-and-after of one preset switch. The stacked toasts cover the bar's left end until they time out.

    The same canvas corner, panel edge and status bar, the scale bar now reading 20 micrometres above a longer ruler than the previous 10 micrometre shot, its left end under two stacked toasts reading Grid 1.000 micrometres and Grid 20.000 micrometres.View full image

  11. Start the remap. Last, open File → Setup → Keyboard shortcuts… once more and scroll to Component library — it lives in the View group, the next row below Maximise canvas, and ships with no default key. Click Edit. The row doesn't bind anything yet: it switches into a listening state, the value column replaced by an empty text box with a Press a key… placeholder (ringed in the accent color to show it's waiting), and the Edit button replaced by Set. The row keeps its Component library label beside the capture box, so you can always see which action is about to be rebound. Nothing has happened until you actually press a key.

    A cropped row from Glyph's Keyboard shortcuts dialog showing Component library mid-remap: the row label Component library on the left, an empty text box with a Press a key placeholder ringed in orange, and Set and Clear buttons beside it.View full image

  12. Make it yours. Press Ctrl+Shift+L. The dialog validates the combination against every other binding before it commits — a browser-reserved key or one already in use is rejected with a reason shown inline, rather than silently doing nothing — and the row settles back to its normal state with the new shortcut in place.

    A cropped row from Glyph's Keyboard shortcuts dialog showing Component library now bound to Ctrl+Shift+L, with Edit and Clear buttons beside it.View full image

What you built

Nothing on the canvas — this walkthrough is entirely about finding and binding commands faster. You searched the palette and saw why an unrelated command can ride along with a fuzzy match, ran a command and watched the toolbar confirm it instantly rather than four steps later, read the full keymap from the cheat sheet and learned it's not the same surface as the shortcuts dialog despite sharing a title, switched to a KLayout-compatible preset (and learned why this guide remaps only after that switch, plus how to reset everything), applied two different grid presets and watched a toast and the scale bar both prove the switch, and walked a remap through its listening state to a bound key on a command that ships with none. Every one of those is a preference stored in your browser — none of it touches the document, so it carries across every file you open next.

Next steps

The complete, always-current keymap — including whatever preset or remap you leave in place — is the Keyboard shortcuts reference. Tools and shortcuts covers the single-letter drawing tools the palette and cheat sheet both list, and Settings covers the rest of what lives in that same dialog — display units, default path width, hierarchy depth and arc tessellation. Then open the editor and make it yours.

Updated 2026-08-28

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