Search and the command bar

Two ways in

Both run the same search and the same / commands. A result either opens something in MindLake, which then comes to the front, or does its work where you are and says so in a short confirmation, such as “Task added to Tasks Inbox”. The command bar’s field reads “Search MindLake, or type a task or note…”.

Changing the command bar shortcut

1. Open Settings ▸ General and find the Command bar section.
2. Click the shortcut beside Open from any app, then press the chord you want. It must include ⌘, ⌃ or ⌥, and Esc keeps the old one. A chord already used for a screenshot is refused, with the capture that uses it.
3. To turn the shortcut off, hover it and click the ✕.

Also open with ⌥Space adds ⌥Space as a second chord. It is off by default because other launchers and assistants use ⌥Space too, and when two apps claim one chord macOS gives it to only one of them. Free it in those apps first. If macOS refuses a chord because another app holds it, the Command bar section says so.

What search covers

Type anything and every kind of result comes back together, in groups, in this order. Each group shows only its best few; the scoped commands below show more of one kind.

How notes are found

Notes and transcripts come from a search index kept on your Mac. Words match by their stem, so “benchmarking” finds “benchmark”, and the last word also matches as the start of a word, so a half-typed word already answers. A hit in a transcript carries a Transcript badge. A hit in the written note opens the note on the line that matched. Lists, canvases, locked notes and anything the index has not reached yet still answer to their titles. The footer counts the results and says they were searched on this Mac.

The empty bar

Before you type, the bar shows what is left of today’s meetings, up to five, leaving out all-day events and meetings that have ended. Each shows when it starts (“in 12 min”, a time, or Now) and who is invited. Below them, Recent lists the six notes you changed last. The meetings need calendar access; see Schedule.

Calculator

Type a sum and the answer comes first, on a card: the sum on the left and the answer on the right, each with a caption naming the kind of sum and saying the answer in words. ↩ copies the bare number, without thousands separators.

• The signs are + − * / (× and ÷ work too) and ^ for powers, with brackets. x between two numbers means times.
• Brackets come first, then powers, then multiplying and dividing, then adding and taking away.
• sqrt needs brackets: sqrt(2), not sqrt 2. pi is π.
• N% of X is that share of X. X + N% and X - N% add or take off that share of X.
• A number on its own is a search, and so is anything that looks like a date, such as 2026-10-03 or 3/10/26. A sum you have not finished, such as 3 +, shows no answer rather than a wrong one.

Units

Write an amount, a unit, then in, to, as or into and the unit you want. Answers keep up to four decimal places.

• Length: mm, cm, m, km, inches, feet, yards, miles.
• Weight: mg, g, kg, ounces, pounds, stone.
• Temperature: Celsius, Fahrenheit, kelvin (c, f and k are enough).
• Volume: ml, litres, pints, gallons, cups, fluid ounces.
• Speed: km/h (or kph), mph, m/s, knots.
• Area: m², km², square feet, acres, hectares.
• Data: bytes to terabytes, in steps of 1,000.
• Time: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks.

The usual spellings work, singular or plural: kilos, metres or meters, lbs, mins. Weight converts to volume, and back, as water, a gram to a millilitre, and the caption says “assuming water”.

An amount on its own

Type just an amount and a unit, with or without a space, and it converts to its usual counterpart:

Currency

Currencies are written as three-letter codes (eur, usd, gbp) or with the signs £, $, € and ¥ in front of the amount. Answers have two decimal places, the card names both currencies, and ↩ copies the number.

• Rates are the European Central Bank’s daily euro reference rates, so the currencies are the ones the bank publishes, around 30 of them.
• MindLake fetches the bank’s public rates file when you open the bar and the rates it has are more than 12 hours old, and keeps the last rates between launches. The request asks for that file and nothing else: nothing about you or your notes is sent.
• With no saved rates and no connection there are no currency answers. Sums and units always work offline.

Quick capture

Under any search, the last group, Use “…”, offers three things to do with the words you typed. The first two work without leaving the app you are in.

/task and /note do the same with whatever follows them:

/task Pay the invoice friday p1 ~Clients

Snippets in the bar

Snippets show up in search, matched on their shortcut, description and text, and /snippet lists them all. ↩ pastes the snippet’s text into the app you were typing in and puts your clipboard back afterwards. Pasting needs Accessibility access; without it the bar copies the text instead and says “Copied. Paste it with ⌘V”.

To make one without opening Snippets, type /newsnippet, the shortcut, a space and the text, then ↩. /newsnippet ;sig Kind regards saves a snippet called ;sig on the spot, and replaces it if you already had one. ⌘↩ opens it in Snippets instead, and a shortcut alone, or nothing, opens Snippets with a new snippet ready to fill in. See Snippets.

Screenshot text search

MindLake reads the words in the pictures in your vault, screenshots and any other image under 40 MB, so you can find one by what it says. Type the words into the bar, or use /ss to search pictures only (up to 24 results).

• ↩ opens the picture in Sources; ⌘↩ copies the picture.
• The words are read on this Mac by macOS’s own text recognition, slowly and in the background, catching up whenever ⌘K or the command bar opens. Each picture is read once, and again only if it changes.
• What it reads is kept in your Mac’s Caches folder, never in the vault, so it does not sync.
• Pictures that are in iCloud but not downloaded to this Mac are skipped, never downloaded to be read.

Clipboard history

/clip lists the text you copied, newest first, with the app it came from and when; words after /clip narrow the list. ↩ pastes a clip into the app you are in, and ⌘↩ saves it as a note.

• Text only, and the last 200 copies. A single copy of more than 100,000 characters is not kept.
• MindLake checks the clipboard twice a second while history is on.
• Nothing an app marks as concealed, passing through or generated is kept, which is how password managers mark what they copy, and nothing from 1Password. What MindLake pastes for you is not kept either.
• The history is one file in MindLake’s Application Support folder on this Mac, with macOS file protection. It is never in your vault and never syncs.
• Keep clipboard history, in Settings ▸ General ▸ Command bar, is on by default. Turning it off deletes the history; Clear Clipboard History empties it and leaves it on.

Floating note

/float opens a small note, 340 by 360 points, that stays above every window and on every Space. It edits an ordinary note in your vault called Floating Note, made the first time, and saves 0.8 seconds after you stop typing. /float again closes it.

Quick links

Type a keyword, a space and some words to search a site with them:

So wiki Ada Lovelace opens Wikipedia’s search for her. A web address on its own, such as example.com/path, offers Open.

Adding your own quick link

1. Type /quicklink, a keyword, a space, and the address with {q} where the words should go.
2. Press ↩ on Add quick link.

/quicklink jira https://example.atlassian.net/browse/{q}

Then jira ABC-123 opens that issue. Your quick links are kept on this Mac. Adding a keyword again, or one a built-in link uses, replaces it; there is no way to remove one yet. /quicklink on its own lists every keyword.

Slash commands

Type / to turn the field into a command line. The list shows every command, ⇥ fills in the highlighted one, and most have shorter aliases, listed after the name. They work the same in ⌘K and the command bar.

Go to a section

A section you have hidden from the sidebar has no command.

Search one kind

Make and capture

Everything else

Keys in the bar

Filtering a section with ⌘F

⌘K is for going somewhere. To narrow the list you are looking at, use ⌘F (Edit ▸ Find…). In an open note it opens a find bar for the note’s text. In a section it opens that section’s own search field, which filters the list in place, so you can select the results and change them together. ⌘K and ⌘F never share what you typed, and Esc in a section’s field clears it.

What the bar leaves out

Some launcher features are left out on purpose. Each is a product of its own and would need permissions a notes app should not ask for: launching apps (Spotlight does that), managing windows, ending processes, a colour picker and an extension store.