[saagarjha]

(Disclaimer: I’m on mobile and definitely haven’t used this yet.) I feel like the problem of “I don’t know the shortcut to do this” is solved for my by hitting ⌘? And searching the menus for a keyword, then hitting enter. How do you see this as improving upon that? Is this something you have to set up per app? Because if it doesn’t automatically populate its options with actions I use a lot but don’t use the shortcut for that seems like a miss :)

[MarcScott]

Like me, you seem to like to drive your computer with the keyboard and use the mouse when necessary.

I use the Windows key to open applications on Windows, Cmd+Space on MacOS, and Mod+d on my i3 nixOS machine.

Some people like their mouse/trackpad though, and this seems like a useful tool for those that do.

[diatone]

Agree, there are pointer-centric patterns of computer use. Usually visual things: art, design, some CAD, marketing, and of course the GUI patterns of personal computer use that most people have been taught

[pazimzadeh]

it would be cool to have an options to show the shortcut under the icon in the radial menu so that over time you learn it, and over time can replace items on the menu to ones you still don't have memorized

[saagarjha]

You still have to use a keyboard shortcut to activate this, though?

[minton]

Thanks for this! I have used macOS for ten years now and somehow I was unaware of this. This is such a useful feature, it’s a shame it’s not better documented.

[hauken]

You set up the frequent shortcuts you want for each app: This way you can quickly switch between different modes or tools in your different apps by only remembering one shortcut.

[DonHopkins]

TwistedMexi: How About a Searchable Pie Menu? | The Sims 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1brQOz6FZjI

Smarter Pie Menu: Searchable Interactions V2.0:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/83099506

RosannaTxt: SEARCHABLE Pie Menu Mod for The Sims 4 - An absolute GAME CHANGER!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0TY6gV9InQ

Keyboard shortcuts are a completely different action than pie menu gestures, so keyboard shortcuts are not as easy to learn as pie menu gestures, because they don't support "rehearsal": browsing a pie menu is actually rehearsal for using them with quick "mouse ahead" gestures, while selecting from linear drop-down menus that show keyboard shortcuts isn't rehearsal because using keyboard shortcuts is a totally different unrelated action than using a drop-down menu.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17105643

>Swiping gestures are essentially like invisible pie menus, but actual pie menus have the advantage of being "Self Revealing" [5] because they have a way to prompt and show you what the possible gestures are, and give you feedback as you make the selection.

>They also provide the ability of "Reselection" [6], which means you as you're making a gesture, you can change it in-flight, and browse around to any of the items, in case you need to correct a mistake or change your mind, or just want to preview the effect or see the description of each item as you browse around the menu.

>Compared to typical gesture recognition systems, like Palm's graffiti for example, you can think of the gesture space of all possible gestures between touching the screen, moving around through any possible path, then releasing: most gestures are invalid syntax errors, and they only recognizes well formed gestures.

>There is no way to correct or abort a gesture once you start making it (other than scribbling, but that might be recognized as another undesired gesture!). Ideally each gesture should be as far away as possible from all other gestures in gesture space, to minimize the possibility of errors, but in practice they tend to be clumped (so "2" and "Z" are easily confused, while many other possible gestures are unused and wasted).

>But with pie menus, only the direction between the touch and the release matter, not the path. All gestures are valid and distinct: there are no possible syntax errors, so none of gesture space is wasted. There's a simple intuitive mapping of direction to selection that the user can understand (unlike the mysterious fuzzy black box of a handwriting recognizer), that gives you the ability to refine your selection by moving out further (to get more leverage), return to the center to cancel, move around to correct and change the selection.

>Pie menus also support "Rehearsal" [7] -- the way a novice uses them is actually practice for the way an expert uses them, so they have a smooth learning curve. Contrast this with keyboard accelerators for linear menus: you pull down a linear menu with the mouse to learn the keyboard accelerators, but using the keyboard accelerators is a totally different action, so it's not rehearsal.

>Pie menu users tend to learn them in three stages: 1) novice pops up an unfamiliar menu, looks at all the items, moves in the direction of the desired item, and selects it. 2) intermediate remembers the direction of the item they want, pop up the menu and moves in that direction without hesitating (mousing ahead but not selecting), looks at the screen to make sure the desired item is selected, then clicks to select the item. 3) expert knows which direction the item they want is, and has confidence that they can reliably select it, so they just flick in the appropriate direction without even looking at the screen.

[lupire]

Expert mode pie/marking selection has strong analogues to modern iPad OS's mystery meat gestures for navigating the home screen. (App switcher, dashboard pull down, control panel pull down)

[DonHopkins]

Except that the pie menu can pop up as soon as you stop moving, revealing available menu items and their directions.

That is what I mean by "self revealing": When it pops up, the menu shows you what options you have. But you can use it with a swift gesture and it doesn't pop up at all, or you can start out with a swift gesture in the direction you want, then stop and wait for the menu to pop up to confirm you've selected the right item, then click to select it.

Also the menu can display the selected item label next to the cursor like a tooltip while you're gesturing ahead, before it's popped up the entire menu, to feed back the selected item even before popping up the menu.

The best case is when the menu can apply a preview of the currently selected item (which can include using the distance as a parameter, like setting the size of something by "pulling out"), so you just release the button when you see what you want, without ever having to see the menu itself if you move continuously, but at any time you can stop moving and see the menu.

Not all implementations of pie menus support all these features, but I've been implementing and writing about them for decades, they're not patented, and anyone who wants is free to implement them.

You really ought to try them out yourself, since just architectural armchair astronaut speculating about how a hypothetical user interface you've never actually used might work, without actually implementing it, and using it a lot, and measuring its speed and error rates, and iteratively refining it, and putting in front of users and asking them for feedback, and shipping and supporting it in real world products and open source projects, isn't really useful and doesn't provide much insight.