Quicklinks

A quicklink is a saved destination that behaves like any other launcher entry: searchable, bindable to a shortcut, and able to take input.

Settings → Quicklinks holds the feature switch. It ships off.

While the feature is off there is no section, no Create/Search/Import/Export commands, and nothing opens — but bindings stay registered, so re-enabling restores every shortcut you had.

Destinations

Tinycast works out what a link is from its shape alone:

Two shapes are read the way you almost certainly meant: a single-letter "scheme" is a Windows drive letter, and a scheme: followed only by digits is a host:port.

Placeholders

Quicklinks use the same token set as snippets:

https://google.com/search?q={argument}
https://github.com/search?q={argument name="Repository"}
https://translate.google.com/?text={selection}
https://chat.openai.com/?q={clipboard}
~/Notes/{date format="yyyy-MM-dd"}.md

{cursor} and {snippet:…} are left literal in a destination — there is no caret to place in a URL.

Encoding

Values going into a URL or deeplink are percent-encoded automatically, after any modifiers run. A local path is never encoded, so %20 in a path stays a literal %20.

| raw opts out of encoding, and also lets the substituted value change what kind of destination this is — a {clipboard | raw} holding file:///Users/me/notes.md resolves to a local path. That is powerful and occasionally surprising, which is why it has to be asked for explicitly.

The argument prompt

A quicklink that needs values collects them in the palette, one at a time. The search field is the current argument's input, and the screen above lists every argument with what you have answered so far.

• ↵ commits and moves to the next one; on the last, it opens.
• ⌫ on an empty field steps back and restores what you typed there.
• An argument declaring options= shows its choices as selectable rows.

The context is captured once, before the first prompt, so {clipboard}, {selection} and {date} cannot drift while the form is open. Triggered by a shortcut with the palette closed, the frontmost app is recorded first, so {selection} reads from the window you were actually in.

When there is no selection

If a template reads {selection} and the front app exposes nothing readable, When there's no selected text decides what happens:

• Ask for it (default) — a "Selected Text" prompt appears
• Use the clipboard — substitutes the clipboard instead

Opening

Open With stores a specific app. If that app has been uninstalled, you get a clear failure with an Open with Default button rather than a silent fallback.

Open in a new window passes --new-window. Chromium and Firefox honour it; Safari ignores it. With it off, opening reuses the frontmost tab — so "prefer existing tabs" is this same switch, not a second one.

A path destination is checked for existence first, so a deleted folder names itself.

Searching and pinning

Quicklinks get their own launcher section between System Settings and Snippets.

Only the name is indexed. The destination is not searchable.

Order is pinned first — in the order you pinned them — then the rest by name. Pinned means the top of the Quicklinks section, not above Applications.

The Search Quicklinks command opens a dedicated screen:

Editing keeps the quicklink's shortcut, favorite slot, visibility and learned ranking. Duplicating takes a new identity, so the copy cannot inherit the original's shortcut.

Import and export

Versioned JSON, pretty-printed with ISO 8601 dates so you can hand-edit it. A bare array also decodes, and only name and link are required.

{
  "version": 1,
  "quicklinks": [
    {
      "name": "GitHub search",
      "link": "https://github.com/search?q={argument name=\"Query\"}"
    }
  ]
}

Duplicates are detected by name or by destination, against your existing library and against the rest of the incoming file. Skipped entries are counted and reported. Every imported entry takes a fresh identity.