ctrl+space opens spotlight, and ctrl+? tells you everything else

Fourth chord for the launcher, and the last move is a return: ctrl-space → shift-space → alt-space →
ctrl-space. Every one was the owner naming a real collision, and this one is the interesting direction —
alt-space is the GNOME window menu, he rebound the desktop to keep it, disliked what he rebound it to, and
would rather move the app than the window manager.

ctrl-space was ruled out on 2026-08-20 as "focuses the address bar in Brave". That observation was made
before anything preventDefault'ed it, and the trade has changed: rebinding a browser is cheaper than
rebinding a desktop. Written down in the file, because if the address bar still wins the key never reaches
the handler and nothing in this repository can help — the fix would be in Brave.

`!ev.shiftKey && !ev.altKey` matters: ctrl+SHIFT+space is the theme browser, and one chord opening both is
the bug that needed a capture-phase listener to fix on the theme side. Verified in the built bundle that the
two conditions are disjoint.

CTRL+? renders every shortcut from a registry, ported in shape from vimazing's gameInfo.ts — controls
declared as data, help screen renders them. Its renderer was a recursive `any` walk, right for a game whose
help also carries rules and scoring; here the content is one shape, so the renderer is typed and boring and
the value is in state/shortcuts.ts.

The registry is deliberately NOT authoritative yet, and says so: the handlers still hold their own
conditions, so changing a chord here does not move it. Each entry names the file that implements it, so the
pair is one search apart. Making it the source of truth is the configurable-shortcuts work, and doing it now
would rewrite three handlers for nothing visible.

Also removed a line I put in the theme dropdown yesterday promising "alt+space to search every theme by
name". Themes are not Spotlight items — that was an instruction for a feature nobody built, sitting in the
UI as though it worked. It now points at ctrl+?, which exists. Two comments naming ctrl+alt+space for the
theme browser were corrected to ctrl+shift+space with the older chord noted as still accepted.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-22 15:57:42 +00:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent bcdc769083
commit f586d748d6
6 changed files with 233 additions and 12 deletions
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ const {
*
* ── The overlay ──
*
* `ctrl+alt+space` opens a list in the middle of the screen; `j`/`k` move through it and `l` applies the
* `ctrl+shift+space` opens a list in the middle of the screen; `j`/`k` move through it and `l` applies the
* focused theme to the app BEHIND it. That is the whole idea, and it is why this is a portal over a
* translucent backdrop rather than a modal dialog: you are meant to watch the application change while
* you browse, so as little of it as possible should be covered.
@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ export const ThemeSwitcher = () => {
<div className="shrink-0 border-b border-border px-2 py-1.5">
<DropdownMenuLabel className="px-0 py-0 text-xs font-normal leading-relaxed text-muted-foreground">
<span className="block">ctrl+shift+←/→ cycle · ctrl+shift+space browse</span>
<span className="block">alt+space to search every theme by name</span>
<span className="block">ctrl+? for every shortcut</span>
</DropdownMenuLabel>
<button
type="button"