Option to make Assistant the default mode to start in

bedax

I have the Kagi android app, but I don't use it for searching, I use my browser for that and I set Kagi as my default search engine there. Instead, the feature I want from the app 9 times out of 10 is the Assistant.

It would be very useful if the app could be made to open directly to the Assistant mode as a default. This seems small but honestly it's pretty important as I use my assistant app regularly, and most of them open straight to a dialogue prompt, no switching contexts required, so from a UX perspective you get used to it being frictionless.

As for implementation, it would just need an option under the general settings for selecting the default mode to be in when the app starts.

There would be a dropdown menu in the general settings, listing all the modes Kagi can be in; Search, Assistant, Translate, Summarize, etc. The user selects one, or Search is the default otherwise, and Kagi opens in the selected mode when started.

Thibaultmol

A separate assistant app is planned, once that is available, would you still want to have this feature?

bedax

Ah interesting, in that case I would download the Assistant app and use that. I would keep the Search app, I still wouldn't use it for search though because it doesn't have tabs, which if it did it by the way it would basically replace firefox for me - perhaps this is worth a feature request?

In that case it might still be useful to be able to select the News mode as the default mode for example, although perhaps News/Translate/Summarise should or are going to get their own apps too, making this feature request irrelevant. I think they should to be honest, they're useful tools, but their use requires switching modes first which isn't frictionless; if I have Google Translate and Kagi installed, and Kagi Translate is two taps and Google Translate is one, generally a person will choose the path of least resistance, so separate Kagi apps for Assistant/Translate/etc would be a better solution.

Edit: just saw there are separate apps for News and Summarise already

bedax

Another possibility would be similar to Tasker, where Tasker puts an alias shortcut on the user's android Home screen, which when tapped opens the app in a separate mode. So Kagi could install an Assistant/News/etc shortcut on the users Home screen, which would cause Kagi Search to open in that corresponding mode.

Either way, I think the auxilliary tools in Kagi should be one tap away from the home screen, and the above solution has the benefit of not splitting the code base.