Files
omarchycn/manual/03-coming-from-mac-or-windows.md
07fccef41c Add Super + Q as a second chord for closing a window (#7767)
* Add Super + Q as a second chord for closing a window

Super + W stays the documented default. Super + Q is the chord people
arrive with from macOS, where Command + Q quits the app, and typing it
into Omarchy did nothing at all until now.

🤖 Generated by Opus 5 in Claude Code. Reviewed by Codex XHigh.

* Put an action's alternative chord on one keybindings row

Super + W and Super + Q both read "Close window" in the menu, two rows
apart, with nothing to say they were the same thing -- and the
alternative sorted above the default. The scratchpad and the calculator
had the same trouble, each bound to a chord and to a second key.

Four actions are named as having an alternative, one at a time, and the
second chord joins the first one's row. A rule would be wrong here: Alt +
Tab and Shift + Alt + Tab both say "Reveal active window on top" while
cycling opposite ways, and a media key is nobody's idea of an alternative
to a Super chord. Both halves still have to agree on what they dispatch,
since a label is only what a chord is called, and an unresolved
dispatcher never counts as agreement.

Nothing is allowed past the 35-character column: a pair that would
overrun it stays as two rows rather than pushing its arrow out of line.
The menu elides a row that outgrows its card -- 754px of label, 78
monospace characters at the heading size -- and the longest entry already
sits at 74, so widening the column to fit the widest pair would have cost
two dozen rows the end of their description.

Priority ordering reads the rendered row, so the chord sharing it would
otherwise reclassify the entry: XF86Calculator alone belongs in the tail
kept for media keys, and it took the calculator down there with it.
Ranking now reads the chord that leads the row.

The key left of 1 reads as ~ rather than Hyprland's name for it, whether
a bind names it or reports the keycode for the keymap to resolve. Cached
records predate all of this, so the cache version moves with it.

🤖 Generated by Opus 5 in Claude Code. Reviewed by Codex XHigh.

Co-authored-by: Codex XHigh <noreply@openai.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Codex XHigh <noreply@openai.com>
2026-08-22 16:55:01 +02:00

4.9 KiB

Coming From Mac or Windows

If you've spent years on macOS or Windows, your fingers know a hundred things your brain has forgotten it ever learned. This chapter is the translation layer: where those instincts go in Omarchy. The features themselves are covered in depth elsewhere — this is just the map.

Super is the center of everything

All the muscle memory you've built around Cmd or the Windows key transfers to one key: Super. That's the Windows key on a PC keyboard, and it's the anchor for nearly every hotkey in Omarchy.

Your Spotlight or Raycast or Start-menu reflex becomes Super + Space. That opens the Omarchy menu, which launches apps, changes settings, installs software, captures the screen — just about everything. Start typing to filter. There's also a dedicated apps-only menu on Super + Alt + Space. See navigation.

There's no dock and no desktop icons

Nothing to click to launch things, no icons to arrange on the desktop. Apps start from a hotkey (Super + Return for the terminal, Super + Shift + Return for the browser, and Super + K for a list of everything that's mapped) or from the menu. The one persistent piece of UI is the top bar, which covers what the menu bar, system tray, and Notification Center did for you before — and nearly every widget on it does something on left, right, and middle click.

Windows place themselves

The biggest mindset shift: you don't drag windows around or snap them to screen halves. Open a window and it takes the whole screen. Open a second and they split it. You never fish a window out from under another one, because windows don't overlap.

When you genuinely need a floating window, Super + T toggles the active one out of the tiling (and back). But give the tiling a real chance first — it's the heart of the whole thing. Navigation walks you through it.

Workspaces will feel familiar: they're macOS Spaces or Windows virtual desktops, except you'll actually use them, because Super + 1/2/3/4 jumps straight to one and Super + Shift + 1/2/3/4 sends the active window there. No animation delay, just instant jumps. This means that you might not even need multiple monitors, if you were used to that before.

Copy and paste just work

On the Mac you had Cmd + C everywhere. On Windows you had Ctrl + C everywhere — except the terminal, where it kills your program. Omarchy gives you Super + C, Super + X, and Super + V, and they work everywhere, including the terminal. No separate reflex to learn for the shell.

Windows folks: your Win + V clipboard history lives on Super + Ctrl + V, and it holds images as well as text. See unified clipboard & history.

The translation table

You reach for In Omarchy
Spotlight / Raycast / Start menu Super + Space — the Omarchy menu
AirDrop LocalSend, via Super + Ctrl + S — see GUIs
Cmd + Shift + 4 / Win + Shift + S Print Screen — see screenshots & recording
Notification Center Notification history on Super + Shift + Alt + ,
Time Machine (for the system) Automatic system snapshots on every update
App Store / downloading an installer Install in the menu, or omarchy pkg add — see other packages
System Settings / Control Panel Setup in the menu, which edits plain config files — see dotfiles

Some things really are different

A lot of settings live in text files you edit, not panels you click through. That sounds primitive until you realize it means every tweak can be seen, copied to your next machine, and put in version control. The Setup menu drops you straight into the right file and restarts whatever needs restarting when you're done.

Updates come through one command — Update > Omarchy — that updates Omarchy itself and every package on the system, taking a snapshot first. No per-app updaters nagging you at random. See updates.

Software comes from a package manager, not from downloaded installers.

And when you close a window, the app actually quits. There's no macOS limbo where the program keeps running with no windows. Super + W — or Super + Q, if that's the finger memory you arrived with — means gone.

On Mac hardware

Omarchy runs well on Intel Macs — see Mac support. And the keyboard is kind to you: Omarchy doesn't remap anything, and Linux treats the Command key as Super, so Super sits right where Cmd always was. Your thumb won't notice the move.

Give it two weeks

The instincts transfer faster than you'd think. Skim the hotkeys chapter once, and whenever you blank on a binding, hit Super + K — it shows you all of them. That's the only hotkey you actually have to memorize.