
Shortcat - Keyboard productivity app for Mac OS X - superchink
http://shortcatapp.com/
======
crazygringo
As someone who has tried to come up with a lot of product names...

"Shortcat -- killing mice, one at a time."

is just genius. Super-kudos to whoever came up with that.

~~~
_chendo_
I'll pass the kudos on :) I'm glad you like the name

------
_chendo_
Hey all, I'm the developer behind Shortcat. Feel free to ask me questions or
give me feedback! I'm on a short holiday at the moment so I might not be able
to respond super quick.

If you do use the app and it crashes, please send a crash report and a short
description what you were doing. It helps me a lot figuring out what the
problem is. I post up known issues at [https://trello.com/board/shortcat-
bugs/51ac6a3711f6b34606001...](https://trello.com/board/shortcat-
bugs/51ac6a3711f6b34606001d7f) (public Trello board) so people can vote and
comment on issues.

I strongly suggest reading the README as I haven't baked in a tutorial to the
app just yet.

~~~
uncr3ative
I love this! Would love it even more if it let me choose from the open tabs
(the open coversations) in adium...;)

~~~
ddinh
Similar issue occurs in iterm:
[http://i.imgur.com/UBybMP4.png](http://i.imgur.com/UBybMP4.png)

~~~
klapinat0r
Would you mind sharing which font that is? Looks a bit like some form of
Courier. Is it a specific zsh theme (oh-my-zsh), or custom? :)

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christiangenco
Oh wow, this is brilliant. My only problems with it are that it doesn't work
with some applications, which is the _perfect_ problem to have, because it
means I can now identify applications that have accessibility issues that I
didn't notice before.

Demand for accessible apps increases -> I become more productive and apps
become more accessible for people that need them. Perfect!

~~~
_chendo_
That's the idea! I've had a few emails from a few devs of Mac apps and they're
going to fix up some issues

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malandrew
Being able to define new shortcuts in real time is awesome, but half the
battle. Helping me learn the shortcuts that are already there is the other
half.

Can you guys add a feature that flashes on the screen the keyboard shortcut
that already exist for an action performed via the mouse?

Even better if you can add a threshold for an action. For a trivial example,
imagine just going to the edit menu and choosing cut/paste/copy. If I perform
that action more often than once every 10 minutes, shortcat would flash a
fairly large overlay on my screen showing me that shortcut. You could even
make this progressive. First teach me any shortcuts for any action performed
every 5 minutes for a particular application. Once I learn all those actions,
expand the threshold one minute at a time until I learn a new action. Once I
consistently perform those actions within the threshold via the keyboard,
further increase the threshold until I learn all the commands.

How much do you plan on charging?

~~~
watterssn
To help with the other half (of learning the existing shortcuts) you can learn
them at [https://www.shortcutfoo.com](https://www.shortcutfoo.com)

Shortcat seems like a great complement to shortcutFoo! Very cool idea.

(disclaimer: I created shortcutFoo)

~~~
malandrew
Cool. However, what I really want is an app that trains me while I'm doing my
own work. Going to a specific site to practice on that site is great and all
but it doesn't help me remember a shortcut nearly as much as learning that
shortcut while working on my own work. Learning on my own work is far more
likely to be retained, because my brain can link the recently learned shortcut
with something which has meaning to me and is likely to be far more top of
mind than a random lesson example.

------
swift
Amazing. This has instantly become a must-have utility for me after trying it
out for just a few minutes. Easily the best new Mac utility I've seen in a
very long time.

I noticed the mention of the "regions" feature in the README, so maybe you
already have plans for solving this, but one thing I'd love would be to have a
way to select something based in part on its proximity to something else. For
example, imagine I want to click on the comments link for a particular story
on the HN front page. It'd be more intuitive to me to type, say,
"Shortcat#comments" to pick the item that matches "comments" nearest the item
that matches "Shortcat", than to type "comments" and hit Control to select the
correct link.

~~~
_chendo_
Thanks!

Regions needs a bit more thought, but it'll let you narrow down the search
space easier when you're using a complex app like Xcode with a billion
different scrollviews.

That's actually a pretty cool idea! I had ideas for sorting by depth in the
element tree to current active or moused over element, but a proximity-based
search would be interesting. What operator would you think is meaningful? I
haven't got plans for '#' just yet.

~~~
swift
I'm not sure what the best operator would be for my suggestion, but after
thinking about it '/' would work well since it calls to mind the idea of
navigating a hierarchy. 'Shortcat/comments' feels nice to me. It can also be
typed without using shift on a US keyboard, which is convenient.

~~~
_chendo_
I'll be adding '/' down the track for a proper hierarchy, but things that are
close to each other aren't guaranteed to be in a sane hierarchy. What about
'@'? "comments@shortcat" kinda flips it around first, which could work as you
might decide to narrow down the query when you see too many results. A
possible problem is that the second part of the query also has too many
results.

~~~
swift
That sounds like a good approach!

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jcromartie
I can see this being an OS X power-user/accessibility feature in the next
major release. Enjoy your acquisition and/or idea being brazenly appropriated.

------
alanctgardner2
I'm seeing a CloudFlare error:

DNS Points to Prohibited IP You've requested a page on a website
(shortcatapp.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, it is
resolving to an IP address that is creating a conflict within CloudFlare's
system. If you are the owner of this website, you should login to CloudFlare
and change the DNS A records for shortcatapp.com to resolve to a different IP
address.

Timestamp: Fri, 07-Jun-13 22:40:20 GMT

Requested URL: shortcatapp.com/0

Error reference number: 1000

Server ID: FL_29F5

Process ID: PID_1370644820.240-1-3281482

Edited to remove my personal info.

~~~
_chendo_
It seems to be fine here... anyone else having the problem? The /0 at the end
of shortcatapp.com looks a bit odd...

~~~
nbouscal
I had the same problem just now, when I clicked the download link. I went back
and clicked it again and it worked fine the second time.

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domodomo
You've nailed it here, outstanding job.

Any chance of defining a custom selection key other than ctrl? On my Macbook
air, holding the control key with my pinky or thumb while I type is really
awkward. Shift would seem more natural, as the pinky finger is already used to
using this as a modifier, no?

~~~
_chendo_
Thanks!

Hmm, probably. I used to use Shift but the problem was there are languages
where they need to use Shift to be able to type more letters (Thai for
example), so it wouldn't let them type other languages. I could probably add
it as an option though, but you wouldn't be able use capital letters,
naturally heh

------
m_ke
Awesome, goes great with vimium for chrome
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb)

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jaxbot
I'll be the one to say it. Awesome. Anything like this for Linux or Windows?

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mikeroher
Any way this can be "downgraded" for Snow Leopard? I hate the iOSification
Lion and Mountain Lion have gone through. I like my vintage Expose with the
Dashboard disabled.

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colbyh
A very good compliment to Quicksilver indeed. This will be invaluable when I'm
in browser tab hell and need to find one specifically.

A menu bar icon would be appreciated!

~~~
_chendo_
The menu bar icon is coming back in the next version (v0.4.3) :)

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jhickner
Very cool!

Small suggestion: In the case of selecting an item that's not the topmost, it
would be nice if it was a one-step process rather than two (you need to first
highlight with ctrl+letter, then activate with Enter).

Maybe a repeated press of ctrl+letter could actually activate the selection.
Or maybe pressing and holding ctrl+letter for a short while.

~~~
_chendo_
The reason why I'm currently making users explicitly use Enter/Return to click
is because this allows them to use modifiers while clicking, so Ctrl+Enter for
right click, Cmd+Enter on a link to open it in a new tab, etc. However, I
think Ctrl+letter might be interesting, but might be confusing on multi-letter
shortcuts.

------
shurcooL
This is cool. Nice name.

I've already been doing something like this in browsers for some time:

Cmd+F

Type

Enter/Shift+Enter to go next/prev result (or Cmd+G/Cmd+Shift+G)

When it highlights the link you want to press: Esc, Enter

Of course the beauty of this app is that it works outside the browser too.

------
septerr
Great idea and product. I will gladly pay for it. One of the biggest issues I
had when transitioning from pc to mac was the lack of meaningful shortcuts.
This would have eased the pain greatly!

I could not figure out how to click an element when using . to highlight all
elements.

------
tomflack
I subscribed to your newsletter (life is too short for beta software, but once
it hits 1.0 I'm all over it!) and you're on Elizabeth Street!

I'm based out of Canberra at the moment, but it's great to see local guys pop
up on HN occasionally.

------
lostpixel
Very nice. On your readme page you mention that with sublime text nothing
works. I presume the onus will be on Sublime text developers to make their
tabs available to the assit API?

EDIT: On further inspection of README this is somewhat covered. /sleepy

~~~
emehrkay
Works with TextMate 2 and 1's file browser, not tabs

------
rodly
So if I type in '.' and see the control I want to specify listed as 'C', how
do I tell Shortcat to activate 'C'? I tried obviously typing in ".C" or just
"C" but neither work.

/missed something obvious

~~~
AYBABTME
Ctrl + C

~~~
rodly
Thank you!

------
mitchty
Looks cool, I'll have to test it out. Should reduce the amount of
tab/shift+tab I have to do right now.

That said, the video screencast doesn't show up in firefox sans flash player.
Not a huge deal but thought you might want to know.

------
dantiberian
I must be doing something wrong but I can't see how to select an element or
button by the letter over it's highlight. Ctrl+Letter doesn't do anything for
me. From the README, that seemed to be the way to do it?

~~~
rbnio
If there are multiple highlighted elements on screen, Ctrl-Letter lets you
select which element is highlighted green. The green element can then be
activated/selected with Enter.

As others already suggested, the possibility of directly activating a specific
element by shortcut would be great. Awesome app nonetheless!

------
birgander
Love it. This is a great app! One thing I'm missing though - settings for
colors. I have color vision deficiency and it's very hard for me to see which
element is selected.

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knes
An integration with [alfredapp]([http://alfredapp.com](http://alfredapp.com))
would be so awesome! Hope you can get in touch with them!

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hankcharles
The reviews for this are one of the more enticing reasons of late for me to
switch off of linux. I'm really excited about this. great stuff!

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gdonelli
Made me think of an App I wrote a while ago with the opposite objective, never
touch the keyboard to launch an app. (SapiensApp.com).

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Siecje
Is there something like this for Linux?

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wesley
How are you able to query the accessiblity api so fast? In my experience, it's
awfully slow.

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oakaz
It's what exactly what I've been wishing for years. Does it work in web
browsers ?

~~~
_chendo_
It works in Safari pretty well and Chrome if you run it with a certain flag
(see README). I'm not sure about Firefox at this point though.

~~~
chully_
Doesn't work with Firefox. Please find some solution

~~~
DustinG
Works in Firefox if you (force) enable the accessibility on via about:config.
Change the value to -1

------
tommorris
As someone who tries to avoid mice for RSI-related reasons, this looks
amazing. Thank you.

------
dClauzel
Excellent tool! A good complement for QuickSilver.

Bonus: the cat is absolutely cute :)

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EragonJ
It's really a nice tool to use with. It's as awesome as Alfred !!

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codex
I am in love with the idea of this tool. Can't wait to try it.

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NicholasMurray
Which came first? The name or the product? Both are outstanding.

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Maert
Any chance of this being made/ported for Windows platform?

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hibbelig
Looks really cool, but doesn't work with Postbox.

~~~
_chendo_
This app relies on applications implementing the Accessibility API properly.
I'm hoping that there'll be enough Shortcat users to pressure application
developers into making their apps more accessible so people who actually need
to use accessibility tools (due to being visually impaired can) use their
apps.

I've found that most mail clients (apart from Mail.app, which I don't like)
have pretty terrible Accessibility support, due to heavy emphasis on custom
views. It's still possible to add Accessibility support on custom views
though, but visually-impaired users tends to be a pretty small niché
unfortunately...

~~~
mwfunk
In addition to its other merits, apps like this are a great way to encourage
developers implement Accessibility support, which is really not that
burdensome at all.

If it gets more app developers to support it (even if it's because their users
want to use power tools like this), then indirectly, much good will be done
for the users who need Accessibility support for its intended purpose.
Definitely a win all around.

------
johncoltrane
Nice. It looks like a system-wide EasyMotion.

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vincevip
I think it awesome product with brilliant.

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samweinberg
It's like Ctrl + F meets Vimium.

~~~
kozikow
You can setup similar functionality in vimium - Just set " Use the link's name
and numbers for link hint filtering" in vimium's advanced options. It's
default way to move around vimperator as well.

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Sealy
Who did the cute little cat design?

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oogali
command+shift+{

command+shift+}

?

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i_s
ace-jump-mode.el for OSX. Nice.

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lightyrs
Brilliant.

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grandalf
this is fantastic!

