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The Launcher is the entry point you’ll use most in Linkly AI — a global window much like macOS Spotlight or Raycast. Press one shortcut at any time, type a keyword or a plain sentence, and find the documents on your computer. Its retrieval is hybrid: keyword (BM25) and semantic (vector) search run at the same time and the results are fused into one ranking. So you can search for an exact term, or describe roughly what you’re after — and even use one language to find documents written in another.

Keyword search

Type precise keywords to match filenames and body text

Semantic search

Describe it in natural language — the model understands the meaning and returns relevant documents
The semantic half only kicks in once the embedding model has finished downloading. While the model is still downloading, search silently falls back to keyword-only mode — it works, it just won’t find results that mean the same thing in different words. You can check the status under Settings → Index; see Index Settings for details.

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Opening and closing

Left-clicking the tray icon opens the Chatbot, not the Launcher. The tray menu only appears on right-click — that’s where Search, Pause Indexing and the other menu items live.
The shortcut is rebindable under Settings → General. Press ⌘ + / at any time to pull up the full list of shortcuts.

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Pinning the window

By default the Launcher hides itself the moment it loses focus — the right behavior for an always-on-call tool, but it gets in the way when you want to keep looking at results while working in another window. Click the pin button in the bottom-right corner to turn on Pin launcher, and the window will stop disappearing on blur. Esc still closes it. Click the pin again to unpin.

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Searching

Just type in the input box — results update as you type, no need to press Enter.

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Scoping to a library

Typing @ switches to library-picking mode: the placeholder changes to Type library name… and your libraries are listed below. Once you pick one, its tag appears to the left of the input box and every subsequent search runs only inside that library. To leave the scope: press Backspace while the input box is empty.

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Handing it over to AI

When the results aren’t enough — or what you actually want is “analyze this for me” rather than “find this for me” — press Tab. Whatever you’ve typed is carried over into the Chatbot and the Launcher closes. The Ask AI button to the right of the input box does the same thing.
Tab is only intercepted in ordinary search mode. In @ library-picking mode, while scoped to a library, or in the preview view, Tab keeps its normal behavior.

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Search history

When the input box is empty, the Launcher shows a Recent Searches list — click any entry to run it again. Clear search history in the top-right wipes the list in one go.

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Narrowing the results

When a search returns too much, there are two sets of tools for narrowing it down, both at the top of the results list.

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Filtering by file type

When the results contain more than one file type, a type filter bar appears at the top, ordered by how many results each type has (most first), with the count next to each type. Click one to see only that type; click All to stop filtering. You can also use the keyboard: ⌘ + ↑ / ⌘ + ↓ cycles through All and each type.
The filter bar only appears when the results contain multiple types. If this search matched nothing but PDFs, there’s nothing to filter and the bar doesn’t take up space.

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Sorting

Results are sorted by relevance by default. The sort button at the top switches between three options: Keyboard: ⌘ + Shift + ↑ / ⌘ + Shift + ↓ cycles through them. Once you switch to a time-based sort, each result shows its modification time.
”That thing I edited last week — I can’t remember what it’s called.” For cases like this, search for a rough term first, then switch to Newest; two steps is usually enough.

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Preview and actions

Press Enter on a result to enter the preview view.
  • Full body text, with search terms highlighted and automatic scrolling to the first match
  • Source / Preview toggle (only for documents that have a rendered form, such as Markdown)
  • Details panel: press ⌘ + I to expand it — Title, Path, Match, Size, Words, Modified, Created, Keywords
  • Show in Folder: Shift + Enter, or the Show in Folder button in the top-right, selects the file in Finder / File Explorer
  • Copy path: ⌘ + Shift + C copies the file’s absolute path
  • Export Markdown: for documents whose parsed result is Markdown (structured text converted from PDF, DOCX and the like), one click copies the whole structured Markdown to the clipboard — paste it straight into any AI
Press Esc or Backspace to return to the results list.
Shift + Enter reveals the file in its folder; it does not open it in the default application. That way you can check its location and the files around it before deciding what to do with it.

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Status badges on results

Some results carry a grey Not indexed · … badge, meaning this file can only be found by filename — its content was not indexed. Hover over the badge to see why: The first two are usually caused by a cloud drive’s “files on-demand” feature; once the file is downloaded locally it gets re-indexed automatically. See the corresponding section in the FAQ.

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Keyboard shortcuts

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Global

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Search view

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Preview view

In the tables above, ⌘ corresponds to Ctrl on Windows and Linux.

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FAQ

The most common reason is that the embedding model hasn’t finished downloading, or the download failed — and the search interface gives you no hint about this at all; it silently degrades to keyword-only.Check the Semantic Search row in the status breakdown under Settings → Index, and confirm the model status under Settings → AI → Embedding model. Full troubleshooting steps are in Index Settings.
No, the results may just be incomplete. Indexing is layered: filenames become searchable first, then body keywords, and finally semantic vectors. Search works normally while indexing runs, and the same query will be more accurate once indexing finishes.
Both appear only when relevant:
  • Sort button: only when there are real results (not on the loading skeleton, empty results, or in library-picking mode)
  • Type filter: only when the results contain two or more file types
Click the pin in the bottom-right corner to turn on Pin launcher. Once pinned it no longer auto-hides on blur; Esc still closes it.
Yes. Notes are ordinary Markdown files under ~/LinklyAI, indexed and searched just like any other document.
No. The Launcher searches what’s indexed on this machine. Cloud Libraries are for AI assistants querying through the cloud gateway; they don’t appear in local Launcher results.

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Further reading