[Run] Action key suggestions

[bestknighter]

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

I believe PowerToys Run would be a lot more powerful if we could have not only ">" but several others characters that change it's behavior. Maybe even alias-ing some frequently used commands.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

I have seen some issues requesting for some features and I believe that this would be a nice add overall.
Right now, adding ">" at the start will invoke the shell and run what you write after.

In issue #3245, it's requested to be able to do a web search. Having "?" at the start could tell PowerToys Run that we are definitely wanting to do a web search.

In issue #3233, it's desired to have PowerToys Run to behave exclusively like Window Walker. Instead of limiting and having a toggle for that, we could have ":" to make PowerToys Run show only running apps.

In issue #3179, it's suggested to be able to keep the shell open after executing a command. Having ">>" cause that behavior is interesting.

These suggestions were made in the issues themselves, but I believe that is interesting to put them together in a new issue because it can become even more powerful with other characters.

Maybe we could even have a section on the PowerToys Run settings to allow users to add their own? Or also add some alias? For example, if I often go between three running programs, let's say chrome, word and spotify, I could press Alt+Space and write ":c", ":w" or ":s" to go to the specific program because on the PowerToys Run settings I created the alias for ":Spotify" as ":s" and so on.

This could be used for opening specific folders, running specific scripts with specific arguments*, and so on, as created by the user.

Having the initial characters being the same between the alias and the command should be enforced or else confusion will ensue 😅

*like ">ipr6" be translated to ">ipconfig /renew6" or ">>ipa" be translated to ">>ipconfig /all"

[Mrxx99]

I thought about them same idea making it similar to the Visual Studio Edit.GoToAll search where you can type an identifier before the actual text.

I would suggest these identifiers:

• #f -> only search for files and folders
• #fi -> only search for files
• #fo -> only search for folders
• #a -> only search for apps (UWP, exe, system apps...)
• #w -> open windows (window walker)
• ? -> online search
• #s -> settings (e.g. bluetooth..)

used like:
#fo MyFolder

Additional it would be great if in the settings I could set up a specific shortcut for each of the identifiers, which launches the run dialog where the identifier is already written. Probably most used for window walker (which could have a default shortcut already)

[EnCey]

I propose that the filter "identifiers" be configurable; personally I would prefer the shortcuts suggested by @bestknighter due to their brevity, but I see how others could prefer the proposal of @Mrxx99 which uses a consistent pattern.
This may seem like a minor thing, but especially in a power tool we care about that last ounce of productivity we can squeeze out of our workflows ;)

Making the filters extensible would of course be even better. One possible use case of that would be to "scope" the search to a specific folder. Say I have a collection of tools or apps I frequently use that have conflicting names with other apps and files; by using a custom identifier as a prefix, I could quickly narrow my search down to my tools folder.

[PierBover]

I agree with @EnCey . Personally I'd rather use f for folders than fo or even #fo.

One thing to consider is that some symbols are not so easy to produce in all keyboards. For example the tilde ~ in some ISO keyboards requires pressing ALT + Ñ which a lot of people don't know about, or the ` grave accent so common in markdown doesn't work the same in ISO keyboards either than it does in US keyboards.

[saahmedm]

#6129 is related

[enricogior]

#5273 provides the ability to set individual action key per plugin.

[crutkas]

Great news! This was resolved in the newly released 0.33 version of PowerToys! Head to https://aka.ms/installpowertoys to grab latest.