Make Lens and !bang more ergonomic to use

danny

Add an additional setting to Lens and !bangs to allow association with particular keywords that will trigger them.

nodejs.org doesn't have a site search, so no custom !bang.
If I make a Lens for "nodejs.org", instead of requiring the user to click the webpage for Lens selection, allow user to configure a keyword at the beginning or the end of the query that'll trigger the Lens.

For example, let's say a user configures the keyword to be "nodejs", then the query "nodejs path.join" should automatically trigger the Lens.

Do the same thing for !bangs. For example, allow users to configure keyword of "reddit" to map to !r.
So instead of remembering "!r", user could query "reddit cats" instead.

This feature makes Lens usable from a browser address bar and is more ergonomic for !bangs as well.

Grooty

You can already do “quick bangs” (you can remap the !r bang to just “r” or “reddit”). It's under settings > search, and then right under the “search bangs” toggle. More info here.

As for the Lens bangs, I also really want this feature.

z64

While we explore other solutions for this, I will bring up a workaround for lenses that mostly works.

You can create a bang that opens a lens with the following template:

/search?q=%s&l=LENS_INDEX

Where LENS_INDEX is a number starting from zero, as ordered by the dropdown:

For example, this will create a bang that will open the second lens in this list:

The caveat is that if you reorder your lenses, this bang will go to whichever lens is in the second spot, not the original one you intended. So if you do this, the bang needs to be updated, if you want it to go to the same lens.

macro

As many, Kagi has become my homepage. And like many, I start to type my search term BEFORE I know where to limit the scope of that search.

That's why, like in the screenshot, I found very useful the fact to have the lenses available as shortcuts of that search.

However, even if we setup "shortcut menu" for bangs, their link menu is AFTER a search, on the top right triple dot menu. I would think it would be great to have an option to add them to the main search interface, for example :

macro

Like many, I use kagi directly from the address bar. The fact that bangs can accept syntax AFTER the search terms is a game changer for me as it follow my mind flow: I usually type my idea/term and THEN I know where/how I want to filter that search.

A. It would be useful to have that same awesome syntax behavior with lenses. It would allow, directly from the address bar, to narrow down a search.
B. Even better if we could cumulate those lenses and bangs at the same time

Example use-case, I'm researching a scientific article that is also a pdf :

my-search term !s !pdf !sci (or my-search term s pdf sci) if quick bangs are setup, would

open a kagi search tab with search with cumulated results of my scholar and pdf lenses

open a new tab for my !sci bangs which generate a search on my sci-hub portal or other specific scientific forum

Vlad

macro bangs for lenses are coming soon!

MatLebrun

Vlad 🖖 we're more than one year later and I don't find them, any news on this topic? Maybe they are available but I could not manage to find them?

macro

Thank you @Vlad! Will it include Multiple Bangs / Multiple Lenses as well, or not yet ?

Vlad

MatLebrun

This is done and also we have Snaps now. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/snaps.html