Right now, in the master branch of Kupfer is a really exciting feature: custom keybindings for any command you can perform in Kupfer; the feature is called Triggers.
What you can do with Triggers is take a command you would normally perform in Kupfer, such as launching an application or opening a document, and bind a global key combination to run this command. As long as Kupfer is running, any application can have the current focus. This resembles the Triggers in Quicksilver very closely.
This is a great use for Composed Commands: the way you use this in Kupfer is that you construct a command as usual, but instead of pressing Return to carry out the command, you press Ctrl+Return to create a composite object, in effect the command in an object. Then use the Add Trigger... action on this command, together with a string for the keybinding, for example <Control><Alt>G. [1]
Especially together with objects that are resolved when the trigger is used, such as Selected Text and Selected File, triggers are already very powerful. Here are some examples of what you can trigger:
- Firefox → Launch
- Add a keybinding to launch an application (or focus if already running)
- Selected Text → Search With → Google
- Make a trigger that googles the text selected in the current application. You can do this with any of the search engines you have in Kupfer.
- Selected File → Move To → (Downloads Folder)
- A trigger to move the currently selected file to a specific folder
- Songs → Search Contents
- You may even add a trigger to open a specific subcatalog in Kupfer, like Rhythmbox's songs.
There is no preference pane for triggers at the moment, they are configured right in Kupfer itself, where you can list the currently defined triggers by browsing its subcatalog. You can carry out a trigger's command directly to test it, or remove defined triggers.
| [1] | The interface might change to something more user friendly in the future, for example using a window where the user can simply press the desired keybinding. The master branch was updated after this post's writing to make suggestions for the user, so if the user types F, suggestions of Ctrl+Alt+F, Ctrl+Shift+F etc are made. |
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