How search works

Type into the bar and Saiki searches your apps, commands, files, browser, settings and more at once, in one list ordered by how well each thing matches and how often you open it.

What the bar searches

Open the bar and start typing. Every letter searches all of these together:

Each row shows what it is at its right end, such as Application, File, Tab or Web Page.

Two rows are always last whenever you've typed something: Search Google for “…” (or your browser's default engine) and Ask Claude about “…” (or your default AI). So ↵ always does something, even when nothing else matches.

How results are ordered

The best match is at the top and already selected, so most of the time you type a few letters and press ↵.

Matching

A name scores higher the closer your letters fit it. From best to weakest:

1. The exact name
2. The start of the name (saf finds Safari)
3. The start of a word, including a capital inside a name (stack finds OrbStack)
4. Initials (vsc finds Visual Studio Code)
5. Letters inside a word, from 2 letters
6. Letters in order with gaps, if they line up well enough

Case and accents don't matter: cafe finds “Café”. A single letter only matches at the start of a name or word, and loose scattered letters that barely fit are left out.

What comes first

• An answer to what you typed (a calculation or a developer text tool) comes first.
• Apps, commands and close matches come next, raised by how often and how lately you've opened them.
• Your files appear together as one block where the best of them ranks, closed by Show All N Files when more match than the bar shows.
• Open tabs rank above pages from your history. A page that's already open in a tab shows as that tab, so you switch to it rather than opening it twice.
• Files whose text contains your words (“Contains …”) arrive a moment later below everything else.
• The web search and Ask AI rows close the list.

Results that arrive late, such as files found by their contents or a site's icon, never move the selection off the row you're on. ↵ always opens what you were looking at.

It learns what you open

Every time you open something, it moves up for next time. Each open counts, and the count halves about every ten days, so an old habit fades on its own.

Saiki also remembers the last three searches you opened each thing by. If you typed ter and opened Terminal, then ter puts Terminal first for the next 17 days, even if another app matches ter better.

See why a row is there

Hold ⌥ while the bar shows results. Each row's second line changes to say why it's there, for example “start of a word · picked for “ter” · opened 14× · last 2 hr. ago”. On the empty bar it says “pinned” or “suggested”. Let go of ⌥ and the rows go back to normal. Holding it never changes the order.

Change how a row ranks

Select a row, press ⌘K, and use:

• Reset Ranking forgets every time you opened it, so it ranks afresh.
• Don't Show for “…” hides it for exactly what you typed, and only that.
• Configure Command › Hide from Search (apps, commands and settings) hides it everywhere. Bring an app back in Settings → Applications, and anything else in Settings → Search → Changed in Search.
• Configure Command › Set Alias… gives it a word that finds it. Type the whole alias and the row ranks first; press ⇥ on it to run the row straight away.

These live in the main search only. See Hotkeys and aliases for aliases and hotkeys.

Words that open a scope

Some words, followed by ⇥, switch the bar to search just one thing. The bar hints what ⇥ will do, and the field shows the scope's icon and name. Press ⌫ on an empty field or esc to go back to everything.

When ⇥ has nothing else to do, it asks your default AI about what you typed. Turn that off with ⇥ asks AI in Settings → AI & Agents. See Asking and chatting.

Recent searches

• Reopen where you left off. Close the bar and open it again, and your last search is still there, selected, so typing replaces it and ↵ runs it again. Press esc to clear it. To have it cleared for you, set Clear the last search after in Settings → General to 1, 5 or 15 minutes (it's Never at first).
• Step back through past searches. On the empty bar, press ↑ to bring back the last search you acted on, and keep pressing for older ones. Saiki keeps the last 30.

Keys in the results

An action's shortcut, like ⇧⌘C for Copy URL, works without opening ⌘K first.