Search settings

Settings › Search, or open "cleat://settings/search". Every default here is what Cleat shipped with, and every one of them can go.

Sources

Nine switches, one per thing the root palette looks at: applications, files, browser bookmarks, Apple Notes, Shortcuts, app actions, your script commands, Cleat’s built-in commands, and the inline calculator.

Turning one off removes it from the root palette only. Its own mode still works, so bookmarks stay a bm away and notes a note away even with both switches off. This is worth knowing if you like a quiet root list but still want everything reachable.

Ranking

Learn from what you open is frecency: how often and how recently you picked something, added to its text match score. Type x, open Xcode twice, and Xcode is the first row for x from then on.

Turn it off and two things happen. The order comes from the text match alone, and nothing new is written to disk. What was already counted stays where it is, so switching back restores the ranking you had. Forget Usage History deletes those counts outright. Settings › Usage shows what the counts and the learned queries currently hold before you decide.

Results shown is how many rows the palette returns before file results are appended, from 4 to 30. The panel itself displays eight at a time and scrolls.

The assistant

Offer “Ask” when nothing else matches decides when the palette suggests the assistant for a phrase the deterministic answerers could not handle. Only for questions, the default, requires a question word at the start or a question mark at the end. For any phrase with no answer is the old behaviour. Never removes the row; ask as a keyword still works.

Applications

One result per app matches apps by bundle identifier, so a copy in ~/Applications and the same app in /Applications collapse into one row. Turn it off when you keep two versions of something around and need to pick between them by path.

Hide Apple’s service apps covers the helpers that ship under CoreServices: Archive Utility, Directory Utility, Folder Actions Setup, Ticket Viewer and the rest. You reach these from inside another app rather than by name, so they mostly get in the way. The list underneath is editable, and it matches on the app’s display name, so you can add anything else you never want to see.

To hide one app without opening settings, select it in the palette and press ⌘ K.

Files

Search after is how many characters a query needs before Spotlight runs, three by default. One or two letters match thousands of files and none of them is the one you meant, so Cleat waits. Drop it to one if you have a small home folder and want files immediately.

Files at most caps how many file rows come back, from 1 to 25.

Group files under a heading puts a “Files” label above them. Files arrive a beat after the apps because Spotlight is slower than the in-memory app index, and the heading keeps a file that has just appeared from looking like the app you were about to launch.

Ignored folders

A file is skipped when any folder on its path matches one of these. A name matches that folder exactly; a trailing * matches a prefix, so build* covers build, build-chrome and build-test; a leading * matches a suffix, so *.xcresult covers every test bundle. The defaults cover generated and vendored code: node_modules, DerivedData, Library, Caches, Pods, vendor, .git, build*, dist, out, target, *.xcresult, *.app. Hidden folders are always skipped whatever the list says.

Add your own with the field at the bottom of the list. Restore Defaults puts the shipped list back.

Starting over

Reset Every Search Setting at the bottom of the tab clears all of the above at once. It does not touch your usage counts, your aliases, or anything in another tab.

From a folder row

⌘K on any folder in the palette offers Search This Folder Too, which adds it to the folders here, or Stop Searching This Folder for one already listed.

Keywords

Settings › Search › Keywords lists the words that open each mode: tab, w, recent, cal and the rest. Change them, separate alternatives with commas, and Save. A word already used by another mode, a quicklink or a script command is refused with a note saying who has it. Default puts the original back.