How-to guides
Working fast
The Quick Launcher, quick actions, and the quick switcher.
Most AI tools ask you to go to them. The features on this page work the other way round: they come to you, they start from what you already have, and they are finished before you have finished switching windows.
The Quick Launcher
Press ⌘⇧Space anywhere on your Mac. A single field appears above whatever you were doing: "Ask OOMU or calculate anything."
Type, press Return, and the answer appears in place. The panel resizes to fit it.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ↵ | Run |
| ⌘C | Copy the result |
| ⌘O | Open this as a full conversation in OOMU |
| esc | Close |
The status label reads "Thinking on this Mac." That is not decoration. The Quick Launcher runs on your local assistant with reasoning off, which is why it answers in the time it takes to read the question. It does not reach for the cloud.
It behaves like a part of macOS, because it is one
The panel is a floating native window with the system's own window behavior set on it, which produces four things you can rely on:
- It appears over anything. Including apps that are full screen, where an ordinary window would be hidden behind the Space.
- It follows you between Spaces. It is not pinned to the desktop OOMU happens to be on.
- It opens on the display you are looking at. OOMU centers it on the screen your pointer is on, not on the screen the main window is on.
- It gives your app back. OOMU records which application was frontmost before the panel appeared, and esc returns you to it. You do not land in OOMU's main window because you asked a passing question.
The main OOMU window steps out of the way while the panel is up and comes back afterward, so the launcher never leaves you looking at two OOMU windows at once.
It knows what you copied
If you have text on your clipboard, the launcher picks it up and shows "Clipboard context ready." Ask "summarize this" or "what's the total?" without pasting anything.
Copying is verified, not assumed
⌘C writes the result to the macOS pasteboard, then reads the pasteboard back and compares the two byte for byte by SHA-256. The button only says Copied once that comparison passes. If macOS did not retain the text, you are told rather than left to paste nothing.
Every copy produces a receipt carrying the expected digest, the observed digest, and the byte count, in the same shape as every other action OOMU records. See Evidence & receipts.
It does arithmetic properly
Type an expression and OOMU evaluates it in native code rather than asking a language model to guess. The result previews as you type, before you press anything.
The arithmetic is exact fixed-point decimal, not floating point, so money behaves the way you expect it to. It understands currency symbols and your locale's number formatting, and percentage phrasing such as adding or taking off a percentage. Division by zero, expressions too deeply nested, and numbers too large to represent are refused by name instead of silently producing something wrong.
When the preview is showing, Return copies the answer rather than starting a conversation about it. The whole interaction is one keystroke to open, one expression, one keystroke to take the number with you.
Anything that is not a calculation becomes a real conversation
If what you typed is not arithmetic, the Quick Launcher runs it as an actual turn on your local model and shows the answer in place. That turn is a genuine chat session from the first keystroke, so ⌘O does not re-ask the question. It opens the conversation that already happened, in the main window, and you carry on from there.
The shortcut needs one permission. ⌘⇧Space is captured by a listen-only system event tap, which macOS gates behind Input Monitoring and Accessibility. OOMU checks both before installing the tap and never asks for them from inside the tap itself. Grant them in Settings → Mac access, or the Quick Launcher only opens from inside OOMU.
Quick actions
Quick actions turn a block of text you already have into a finished, formatted document. They live in the Quick actions drawer beside the chat composer.
There are five:
| Quick action | What you get |
|---|---|
| Price List to Spreadsheet | A formatted Excel workbook with verified formulas, built from pasted prices. |
| Compare Vendors | A three-page Word decision memo comparing two to five vendors. |
| Draft Counter-Offer | A commercial counter-proposal with a clear savings target. |
| Review Contract Risks | A Word audit of liability, indemnity, termination, and renewal terms. |
| Summarize Meeting Notes | Owner-assigned decisions and deliverables from raw notes. |
Choose one and a sheet opens with the fields it needs: pasted pricing data, vendor names one per line, a savings percentage, contract text, meeting notes. Fields are validated before anything runs: two to five vendors, a savings target between 1 and 100, required fields actually filled in.
Then choose Create Document or Create Spreadsheet. OOMU builds the file with its native document engine, reopens it to check it, and hands you the result.
The drawer suggests one
OOMU inspects your clipboard and classifies it as financial, legal, or neither. If it recognizes what you copied, the matching quick action is marked Suggested with a small star: pricing data suggests Price List to Spreadsheet, contract language suggests Review Contract Risks.
The classification happens on this Mac, in native code. Nothing about your clipboard is sent anywhere to produce the suggestion.
Each quick action is bound to exactly one document capability in native code, not chosen by a model. Price List to Spreadsheet can only produce an Excel workbook; the other four can only produce a Word document. A prompt cannot talk a quick action into doing something else.
The quick switcher
Inside OOMU, ⌘K opens the quick switcher: "Search chats, agents, workflows, and settings." It fuzzy-matches across your live items and every destination in the app. Arrow keys to move, Return to go.
If live items cannot be loaded for some reason it says so ("Some live items could not be loaded. App destinations are still available.") rather than showing you a short list and letting you assume that is everything.
Related
- Generating documents: what happens after a quick action builds a file.
- Automating your Mac: the rest of what OOMU can reach on your machine.
- How OOMU picks a model: why the Quick Launcher stays local.