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Brief Summary
Throughout macOS the first item in right-click context menus is "Look Up {Word}", but Orion buts "Search with {Engine}" before that which is non-standard – "Look Up {Word}" should always come first.

Image/Video:
The context menu in Orion:

For comparison with other browsers, here's the same context menu in Safari:

And the same in Chrome:

(Firefox doesn't offer the "Look Up {Word}" context menu item)

And for completeness, here's the same in the default Apple Notes app:

  • Vlad replied to this.
    • Best Answerset by Vlad

    This is a year old, but I'd like to voice my support for moving "Search with [...]" after lookup items (that is, in its own section after "Look Up [...]" and "Translate [...]"). The context menu in macOS is designed where users can move their cursor one point on the trailing edge to highlight the relevant item. This makes selection very sensitive since the first item should naturally be the most common action. While a web browser is (mostly) about searching, for selected text in general, the most common action is to look up information about the term (hence, why "Look Up [...]" is the first item in most apps dealing with text).

    In particular, Search With is more expensive in terms of user focus than Look Up or Translate is. When a user selects "Look Up [...]" or "Translate [...]", the text is highlighted and a popover appears. When a user selects "Search with [...]", meanwhile, a new tab appears and is switched to. Undoing the former requires escaping or clicking outside the popover, while the latter requires switching or closing the tab (either via the button or shortcut). The point is, there's a significant overhead to searching compared to looking up, and so making it the first item when Look Up can serve a subset of its purpose well makes for unnecessary stress.

    If the menu was, instead, arranged like so:

    Look Up "..."
    Translate "..."
    - - - - - - - - -
    Search with ...
    - - - - - - - - -
    ...

    Not only would this restore user intuition, but it would also make searching a more clear action (since you'd need to move your cursor more to highlight it). I personally tried having Look Up not be the first item in an app of mine and came to the conclusion that having it first is simply superior.

    Vlad I'm not sure if that's universally true; I at least almost never invoke a search via the context menu but use the "Look Up" functionality many times daily, and with macOS's right click & hold, drag to item, and release to select functionality moving it to a different spot than every other (native) app breaks the muscle memory there.

    It's not a huge deal if the Orion team chooses not to make this change though. Apple have seemingly decided it should be position one systemwide even in Safari so I would think deferring to the system convention to be the safe choice, but I'm on Kagi Ultimate so the occasional accidental search through muscle memory doesn't seriously impact me. Thanks for considering it at least!

    • Vlad replied to this.

      adamaveray Understandatble, I think this was a concious choice made by observed behavior (search being used much more than lookup). Will let other chime in.

        a year later

        This is a year old, but I'd like to voice my support for moving "Search with [...]" after lookup items (that is, in its own section after "Look Up [...]" and "Translate [...]"). The context menu in macOS is designed where users can move their cursor one point on the trailing edge to highlight the relevant item. This makes selection very sensitive since the first item should naturally be the most common action. While a web browser is (mostly) about searching, for selected text in general, the most common action is to look up information about the term (hence, why "Look Up [...]" is the first item in most apps dealing with text).

        In particular, Search With is more expensive in terms of user focus than Look Up or Translate is. When a user selects "Look Up [...]" or "Translate [...]", the text is highlighted and a popover appears. When a user selects "Search with [...]", meanwhile, a new tab appears and is switched to. Undoing the former requires escaping or clicking outside the popover, while the latter requires switching or closing the tab (either via the button or shortcut). The point is, there's a significant overhead to searching compared to looking up, and so making it the first item when Look Up can serve a subset of its purpose well makes for unnecessary stress.

        If the menu was, instead, arranged like so:

        Look Up "..."
        Translate "..."
        - - - - - - - - -
        Search with ...
        - - - - - - - - -
        ...

        Not only would this restore user intuition, but it would also make searching a more clear action (since you'd need to move your cursor more to highlight it). I personally tried having Look Up not be the first item in an app of mine and came to the conclusion that having it first is simply superior.

          5 days later

          Seems like the suggestion has been incorporated as of 0.99.127.2.3-rc 🙌

            Klay Now, start using the best search engine. Life is too short to be using second-best 😉

            5 days later
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