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Search & Shortcuts

Searching​

One of the primary purposes of Dashy is to allow you to quickly find and launch a given app. To make this as quick as possible, there is no need to touch the mouse, or press a certain key to begin searching - just start typing. Results will be filtered in real-time. No need to worry about case, special characters or small typos, these are taken care of, and your results should appear.

You can navigate through your items or search results using the keyboard. You can use Tab to cycle through results, and Shift + Tab to go backwards. Or use the arrow keys, ↑, →, ↓ and ←.

Launching Apps​

You can launch a elected app by hitting Enter. This will open the app using your default opening method, specified in target (one of newtab, sametab, parent, top, modal, workspace, clipboard or newwindow). You can also use Alt + Enter to open the app in a pop-up modal, or Ctrl + Enter to open it in a new tab. For all available opening methods, just right-click on an item, to bring up the context menu.

Tags​

By default, when searching items are filtered by the title, (as well as the url, provider and description). If you need to find results based on text which isn't included in these attributes, then you can add tags to a given item.

  items:
  - title: Plex
    description: Media library
    icon: favicon
    url: https://plex.lab.local
    tags: [ movies, videos, music ]
  - title: FreshRSS
    description: RSS Reader
    icon: favicon
    url: https://freshrss.lab.local
    tags: [ news, updates, blogs ]

In the above example, Plex will be visible when searching for 'movies', and FreshRSS with 'news'

Hiding Items From The Homepage​

You can hide a rarely-used item from the main view but still have it surface when you search for it. Set displayData.hideFromHomepage: true on the item.

- title: MXToolbox
  url: https://mxtoolbox.com
  tags: [dns, mail, debug]
  displayData:
    hideFromHomepage: true

The item still shows up in search results, and stays visible in the workspace view, in edit mode, and when you navigate into its parent section directly.

Custom Hotkeys​

For apps that you use regularly, you can set a custom keybinding. Use the hotkey parameter on a certain item to specify a numeric key, between 0 - 9. You can then launch that app, by just pressing that key, which is much quicker than searching for it, if it's an app you use frequently.

- title: Bookstack
  icon: far fa-books
  url: https://bookstack.lab.local/
  hotkey: 2
- title: Git Tea
  icon: fab fa-git
  url: https://git.lab.local/
  target: workspace
  hotkey: 3

In the above example, pressing 2 will launch Bookstack. Or hitting 3 will open Git in the workspace view.

It's possible to launch a web search directly from Dashy, which might be useful if you're using Dashy as your start page. This can be done by typing your query as normal, and then pressing ⏎/Enter. Web search options are configured under appConfig.webSearch.

Setting Search Engine​

Set your default search engine using the webSearch.searchEngine property. This defaults to DuckDuckGo. Search engine must be referenced by their key, the following providers are supported:

Using Custom Search Engine​

You can also use a custom search engine, that isn't included in the above list (like a self-hosted instance of Whoogle or Searx). Set searchEngine: custom, and then specify the URL (plus query params) to you're search engine under customSearchEngine.

For example:

appConfig:
  webSearch:
    searchEngine: custom
    customSearchEngine: 'https://searx.local/search?q='

Setting Opening Method​

In a similar way to opening apps, you can specify where you would like search results to be opened. This is done under the openingMethod attribute, and can be set to either newtab, sametab or workspace. By default results are opened in a new tab.

Using Bangs​

An insanely useful feature of DDG is Bangs, where you type a specific character combination as part of your search query, and it will be redirected the that website, such as '!w Docker' will display the Docker wikipedia page. Dashy has a similar feature, enabling you to define your own custom bangs to redirect search results to a specific app, website or search engine. The bang can appear anywhere in the query. As long as the whole token is present, pressing Enter will launch that search bang

This is configured under the searchBangs property, with a list of key value pairs. The key is what you will type, and the value is the destination, either as an identifier or a URL with query parameters.

For example:

appConfig:
  webSearch:
    searchEngine: 'duckduckgo'
    openingMethod: 'newtab'
    searchBangs:
      /r: reddit
      /w: wikipedia
      /s: https://whoogle.local/search?q=
      /a: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=
      ':wolf': wolframalpha
      ':so': stackoverflow
      ':git': github

In the above example, when you type :so how to exit vim you'll be automatically sent to StackOverflow

Note that bangs begging with ! or : must be surrounded in quotes in the config (to keep it valid YAML)

Web search can be disabled, by setting disableWebSearch, for example:

appConfig:
  webSearch: { disableWebSearch: true }

When web search is disabled, pressing Enter opens the first matching item instead of web search. This will use that item's configured opening method

Opening URLs Directly​

When enabled (with appConfig.webSearch.openUrlsDirectly), if your search query looks like a URL, pressing Enter will navigate directly to that URL instead of searching for it. Recognized formats include:

  • Full URLs with scheme: https://example.org/path
  • Dotted hostnames: github.com, example.com:8080, example.com/path
  • IP addresses: 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.1:8080, 192.168.1.1/admin
  • localhost (with optional port and/or path): localhost, localhost:8080
  • Bare hostnames when followed by a port or path: nas:8080, router/setup

Note that a bare ambiguous word on its own (e.g. nas, kubernetes) is still treated as a search query, since the intent isn't clear.

Set appConfig.webSearch.openUrlsDirectly to true:

appConfig:
  webSearch:
    openUrlsDirectly: true

You can clear your search term at any time, resting the UI to it's initial state, by pressing Esc. This can also be used to close any open pop-up modals.