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Guide·05 of 10

Text on screen

Highlight by typing, one word or a whole passage, in any app.

01·The first minute

  1. 01link

    Highlight text by typing it

    lode/

    Type a few characters of anything you can see. Every match wears a letter. The shifted letter marks the start, type again and the shifted letter marks the end, and the span between is highlighted and ready to copy.

    Notes

    Launch review moves to Thursday.

    Bring the revisedAA budget and the vendor

    listS, the contract renews on the first.

    Ask design for the venue photos.

    select

    Text on screen, in any application

02·When you are ready

  1. 02link

    Take one word

    lode/⇧A⌘C

    After the first mark, ⌘C takes just that word and the mode is done.

    Hold lode, then /, then shift A, then command C

  2. 03Few know thislink

    Span lines and columns

    lode/

    The end can be on any line below, or in a window beside. The span runs the way reading does, down the column your two marks share, so a sidebar stays out of the copy.

    Hold lode, then /

  3. 04link

    Skip the keystroke

    If a highlight is always a copy for you, one config line serves the clipboard the moment the second mark lands. Off by default.

03·The fine print

What nobody finds by pressing keys

  • A single character matches whole words only, so i finds the word I rather than every letter i.
  • The span snaps to word boundaries: two typed characters name a word, they do not dissect it, so a URL comes out whole.
  • ⌫ walks back: the letter, then the query, then the first mark.
  • What leaves the clipboard is read twice. The pixels are served at once, then the app is asked to select the same span and its text stands when it agrees. Where the app cannot, the frame is read again, upscaled.
  • Inside a field you are editing, the highlight becomes the app's own selection, so delete and replace work from muscle memory.
  • The first lode / asks for Screen Recording. Without it, an accessibility fallback covers what it can.

04·Why

Why it works this way

Text is the mouse's last stronghold. It needs no assigned address, because it is made of the characters your keyboard already produces. A drag needs coordinates, and typed text is not coordinates, so the reading is the selector and the drag is the second opinion.

05·Settings

The settings behind this page

Read from the schema Lodestar itself emits. The settings window shows the same rows, and each wears the path it writes.

gestures.select
boolean

lode /, select text by typing it

$ lodestar config set gestures.select true
select.copy-on-complete
boolean

Copy a completed span to the clipboard the moment its second anchor lands.

$ lodestar config set select.copy-on-complete true