Add a command palette
Hey! My 2 cents.
So, the goal is to be able to switch to an open tab by typing a part of its title or url ("fuzzy search"). As mentioned above, in Firefox you type "% query", which is impossible to discover.
Other solutions:
- in Chrome, you can start typing in the omnibar, and if your query matches an open tab, there is a suggestion with "switch to this tab" button:
- Vivaldi has much more powerful tool - Quick Commands palette, which can be used to find tabs:
I was just going to submit a suggestion to implement Command Palette before I found this post :-)
- Chrome also has Search Tabs popup, for those who did not discover switching tabs from omnibar, and you can type & switch there as well:
- Alfred has couple of nice workflows to switch tabs: Safari Assistant, Browser Tabs.
IMHO, the best option for Orion would be a Command Palette. With one hotkey and a couple of keys pressed, you could:
- find and switch to a tab (by page title or url);
- find and switch to a window (by name);
- find and open a bookmark;
- maybe even execute most common commands (although most of them have shortcuts anyway).
Once you get used to the power of Command Palette, there is no coming back!
I just found there is already a suggestion by someone else, under review, hooray!
@vladstudio can you help summarize the ask, as it has gone out of control?
FYI both https://thebrowser.company/ https://beamapp.co/ solve this really well - the arc implementation is actually fantastic
Vlad I sure can :-) allow me to do this on weekend though - crazy weekdays at work. Thanks.
lazylizard42 What makes it fantastic? Describe 
Screenshots/videos welcome
1) beautiful design (like the rest of arc, also, unrelated, love how they solved the URL for the side-tabs - preserves all vertical screen real estate)
2) expansive commandset
see here: https://browserinc.notion.site/Command-Bar-T-Actions-e18b0069b1db45a99db1fc07d9ba4c41
especially
1) managing tabs with fuzzy search
2) managing history
here you can see how with one word written I query tabs, history and start a search simultaneously. Massive reduction in cognitive load because whenever I want to do anything I just press cmd+t, then start thinking about what I want to do and start typing until only remaining what I wanted to do - this is a lot faster than having first to decide what I want to do, then click the respective shortcut (e.g. having 3 shortcuts for command, history and tabs)
3) managing extensions (e.g. to turn off ublock for a site, I just cmd+t, then type ub<cr>
and voila I can turn it off
4) split views & managing them (again additional feature worth implementing imho, though separate request)
5) preferences
Checking in here after I originally started this a year or so back. Currently using Arc browser which does a fantastic job of having a command palette (and a generally very keyboard focused app, I never have to use my trackpad on there).
My only hangup with Arc is that it sometimes freezes on my (Intel based) Macbook - hence coming back here to see what the development it.
Good to see a bit of support for this and hopefully all the reviews and feedback of Arc's command palette prompts the green light for this feature being built into Orion!
I'll check back every few weeks in anticipation.
For the people who voted, what exactly are you looking for in the command palette?
I would probably use the command palette as the main way how to interact with Orion, i.e.:
Want to open a new website?
Command Pallete -> Type in the website address
Want to search something in configured search engine?
Command Pallete -> Type in the thing I want to search for
Want to share the current website to someone?
Command Pallete -> Type in "Share" and select "Share" action
Something like this, where the "bookmark" is the keyword I'd type in as an example:
So probably:
- Open website if the command is a website
- Search in the search engine as the default action
- (maybe?) search in open tabs
- search in all the actions that Orion provides, e.g. Adding bookmarks, sharing a website, enabling reader mode, enabling compatibility mode, etc.
so: act as an address bar replacement and run common actions (that are often in the menu bar)
eirk Oh, nice. Actually I looked for it recently and I couldn't find it in the menus, for some reason I did not expect that "Open Location..." would do what it does. Thanks!
- Edited
Brief Summary
I think this browser could benefit from having a tab search feature - something similar to what Arc or SigmaOS browsers have.
Details:
Users would press Cmd + T and instead of it opening a new tab - the tab search popup would appear. It would have a search field and there would be a list of tabs the user already has opened or had opened previously that fuzzy match the input and/or there would be an option to search for it on the default search engine. It would greatly benefit the browser, because you would no longer have to manually search for some specific tab using your mouse or other methods, instead you could do it directly from the keyboard. The design and use-case would also match how people use Macbook's Spotlight Search feature. It would also allow to make the browser completely full-screen, hiding the top bar and the tabs since it would make it possible to navigate through them with just the pop-up.
Image/Video:
This screenshot shows the feature as it is displayed on SigmaOS website
archline I generally like the idea of providing a tab searching system. However, I do not think that it should override the existing shortcut for opening a new tab. Most, if not all, macOS apps that support tabs have the universal shortcut of Cmd+T to open a tab; I feel it would be bad practice to do something completely different for that action, as this would produce something unexpected and inconsistent.
Again, I like the general idea, but we should do so in a way that remains consistent with the Human Interface Guidelines.