Systemwide shortcut - similar to Little Arc

sampl_e

Arc has a systemwide shortcut for Little Arc „cmd+opt+N“ that lets you open a search/URL bar, no matter if you are in a different (macOS) Space or in a fullscreen app. Especially Arc doesn’t have to be the active app to open the search/URL bar.
I’d love to see a global or systemwide shortcut for Orion as well as it becomes a seamless way of searching no matter where you are on your system.

laiz

macOS already has Spotlight accessed via ⌘+␣ (or Raycast/Alfred for power users). It allows me to perform a search no matter what I am doing at that moment. How would this feature improve this workflow?

sampl_e

This is meant as a native global shortcut for Orion. I don’t want to use spotlight as it would bring up other results that I am not interested in.

Imagine using cmd+opt+N which brings up a little search window which lets you type in a search or URL and instantly opens that desired URL. Or typing in !yt + search query and it opens the Youtube search.

The convenience here is that the shortcut works everywhere. I work with a lot of different Spaces in macOS and don’t want to keep an Orion window in every space for a quick search. I hope this makes it a little bit clearer.

laiz

I see. It indeed appears to have some upsides. The last time "Little Orion" was mentioned, the focus was on the preview function of it ( #8512 ) but this global shortcut could have some uses. To improve the chances of this suggestion, would you be able to come up with some ideas for the following:

what would the shortcut be?
how would users discover this feature?
what settings would it require, and where would they be located?
what would the search window look like?
would the searches open in an Orion preview window or a new tab?

sampl_e

laiz what would the shortcut be?
For me personally using cmd+opt+N would be great, but it should be possible to change by the user.

how would users discover this feature?
Once the feature is introduced make a pop up during first startup that this is a new option and mention it in the FAQ/documentation.

what settings would it require, and where would they be located?

what would the search window look like?
it could be similar to spotlight, like a little URL bar which lets users input text, see screenshot attached. 1Password has a similar feature „Quick Access“ which opens a little search window.

would the searches open in an Orion preview window or a new tab?
I’d prefer a preview window with the option to then open it in a new tab with a shortcut. Arc does this with cmd+O when the preview window is selected.

Yannick

We are going to add a global shortcut for Orion, but for other features that I will keep secret for now 🙂