feature request [FR] Better Menu Items Search?

[Chris Messina]

There is an Alfred Workflow by @Benzi called Menu Bar Search that offers this functionality (although recently broke in v1.7), but I wonder if this would be a useful addition alongside the Universal Actions feature currently in beta. Just as you can set a hotkey to bring up a list of actions relevant to your selection in Finder, supporting native Menu Items Search via a hotkey would feel consistent, since it's applying a similar "interact with my current context or selection" behavior to the currently focused app.

 

@Andrew what do you think?

 

 

[dfay]

My only concern would be that since (something very similar to) this is native in iPadOS 15 it might be coming to the Mac, too….

[Chris Messina]

2 minutes ago, dfay said:

it might be coming to the Mac

 

In Monterey? Or beyond? Do you have a sense for how you'd invoke it? In this case, since I'm planning to use Alfred indefinitely, it just seems like a relevant expansion but I take your point that it might be subsumed by the OS...

[dfay]

On iPad OS 15 (PB 1), you hold the Globe key or hit Globe-M to bring up the global keyboard shortcut and menu viewer, and hold command or for app-specific, and/or you can hit command-? to go straight to the menu search.  

 

I’m not having much luck finding a video demo, but it’s a really nice UI that I’d like to see ported to the Mac.

 

See https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/06/think-globally-the-ipads-new-universal-keyboard-shortcuts/

[Chris Messina]

4 hours ago, dfay said:

On iPad OS 15 (PB 1), you hold the Globe key or hit Globe-M to bring up the global keyboard shortcut and menu viewer, and hold command or for app-specific, and/or you can hit command-? to go straight to the menu search.  

 

Ah, wow... very interesting! However, you need a keyboard to access that eh? Would love to see a video... do you think for all the folks who might not upgrade to Monterey it still might be relevant for Alfred to add support for?

[dfay]

Yes, it’s all keyboard-driven. TBH I’ll probably stick with Benzi’s workflow which still works for me (may be b/c I haven’t updated it?).  But I love the idea of expanding the feature in Alfred.

 

Here’s an attempt at a video: 

 

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0FFDw0ntGuGKyJLjIITKOIBVQ

[Chris Messina]

OMG, that's beautiful! It also seems to have inspired the new menu design in Cloutie (a Bitclout iOS app):

 

[dfay]

Yeah there’s a lot of nice stuff with the external keyboard that hasn’t been really picked up in the coverage of iPadOS 15 to date.  There’s also a floating equivalent of the MBP Touch Bar but on screen.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a new Swift UI component which Cloutie is using as well.

 

See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/SwiftUI/ToolbarItemPlacement/keyboard?changes=_1

Edited July 14, 2021 by dfay