Core functionality

• Visual interface: Categories are displayed as interactive pills.
• Inline editing: Click a button in any category pill to rename the category or change its sort key in place.
• Keyboard friendly: Fully navigable via keyboard. Use Tab to move, Enter to commit, Esc to cancel, PgDn/PgUp to search subcategories or parent categories (limit 200).
• Autocomplete: Fast prefix search suggestions appear as you type (limit 80).
• Draft mode: Changes are staged first. You can perform multiple adds, removes, and renames before committing them to the database. Ctrl+Enter saves the changes.

Advanced features

• Lazy loading (toggle): CoolCat remembers if you want it open or closed. By default, it loads as a small button to save resources. Clicking "CoolCat" expands the full interface and remembers your choice for next time.
• Winner-Takes-All deduplication: CoolCat intelligently handles duplicate categories. If you rename a category to one that already exists, it automatically consolidates them into a single tag, ensuring clean wikitext output.
• Dashed duplicates: If you accidentally add a duplicate category in the interface, both instances will be highlighted with a dashed border to visually warn you.
• Redirects: If the category you are adding is a hard or soft redirect, CoolCat will replace it with the redirect target and notify you with two brief flashes. For soft redirects, it reads the target from the {{Category redirect}} template (Q5828850) or any of its local aliases.
• Uncategorized template: CoolCat finds the local wiki's {{Uncategorized}} template (d:Q5884621) or any of its aliases and, optionally, removes it for you.
• Smart diff: A built-in "Preview" button lets you see the exact wikitext diff before you save.
• Mobile friendly: Large touch targets for edit/remove buttons make it usable on tablets and phones.

User script

To install CoolCat, add the following line to your common.js file on a local wiki, or to global.js on metawiki:

// Edit categories on a page [[:en:User:Ponor/CoolCat]]
mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ponor/CoolCat.js?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

Gadget

Interface administrators can copy the following files to their wiki (as MediaWiki:Gadget-CoolCat.xxx)

en:User:Ponor/CoolCat

documentation

en:User:Ponor/CoolCat.js

save as MediaWiki:Gadget-CoolCat.js (example), change repoRoot to https://xx.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-

en:User:Ponor/CoolCat.css

save as MediaWiki:Gadget-CoolCat.css (example)

User:Ponor/CoolCat-xx.js

translations, such as testwiki:User:Ponor/CoolCat-hr.js, testwiki:User:Ponor/CoolCat-ja.js, testwiki:User:Ponor/CoolCat-sr-ec.js

Basic controls

• Launch: Scroll to the bottom of any article. If CoolCat is minimized, click the CoolCat button to open it.
• Add: Click the + button. Type a name. Press Enter to confirm.
• Remove: Click the × icon on any pill. The category will be struck through (marked for deletion). Clicking it again will restore it.
• Edit: Click the ✎ (pencil) icon to rename a category or change its sort key (the part after the "|").
• Save: When you are happy with your changes, click Publish.

Keyboard shortcuts

CoolCat is optimized for power users.

Staged changes

CoolCat uses a "Staging Area". When you make an edit, it is not saved to the wiki immediately. The pill changes color to reflect its pending status:

• Green Pill New category added.

• Yellow Pill Existing category modified (renamed or sort key changed).

• Red Pill Existing category marked for deletion.

• Dashed Border Duplicate detected; only one instance will be saved.

Via summary field

CoolCat allows you to quickly pre-fill the staging area by pasting a list of category actions directly into the Edit summary input field. This feature works if the summary field hasn't been modified yet. When you paste a supported format, CoolCat intercepts the text, applies the changes to the interface, and automatically generates the correct summary. Past the initial stage, the Edit summary field can be parsed for category actions using the ⚡ button; the button works two ways: if the edit summary field is empty, it (re)generates the automatic summary.

Supported formats:

• Wiki-links: +[[Category:Cats]] -[[Category:Dogs]] (standard CoolCat summary format)
• Namespaced: +Category:New York -Category:Paris (requires the English or localized namespace prefix)
• Pipe-delimited: +Cats|-Mice and snakes|+Dogs (the shortest format, uses | as category separator)

The three formats cannot be intermixed.

URL triggers

CoolCat supports a URL parameter that allows you to pre-fill the staging area with changes.

• Parameter: coolcat_amend_categories
• Format: [Action] [CategoryName] | [Action] [CategoryName] | …
  • + Add category (e.g., +History)
  • - Remove category (e.g., -Stub)
• Example: ?coolcat_amend_categories=+History|-Uncategorized_pages

This will queue "History" for addition, and mark "Uncategorized pages" for deletion in CoolCat.

This can be useful when the same categories need to be removed or added on a number of pages: prepare the list on a wiki page, and click through it to amend the categories:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox?coolcat_amend_categories=-Remove_this_cat|+Add_this_cat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_title?coolcat_amend_categories=-Remove_this_cat|+Add_this_cat

Configuration options

Internationalization (i18n)

You can override any text string used in the interface via the options inside CoolCatConfig, some of which are the following:

Example configuration

window.CoolCatConfig = {
    noDirectSave: true, // I prefer to review changes in the full editor
    changeSummary: "Cat cleanup",
    btnPublish: "Save now"
};

mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ponor/CoolCat.js?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');