Keyboard shortcut for search that is detected in Windows (without Zotero having focus)

Tomero

Any way to accomplish this? I've been using Everything from voidtools to search PDFs as you can assign a keyboard shortcut to have the search box appear regardless of the app you're in and find what you're looking for. Having the ability to quickly bring up a search box to search my library (i.e. including tags, abstract text etc) would be fantastic.

dstillman

You mean you want to bring up a search box for Zotero with a global shortcut? And then what would happen if you selected a result? It would open the attachment in Zotero, or are you using an external PDF reader? (If the former, I'm not sure how that's particularly different from Alt-Tabbing to Zotero and using Ctrl-F.)

There are Zotero integrations for various launcher apps on macOS — e.g., Alfred — but I'm not sure if there are equivalents on Windows. (Extensible launchers are a very popular category of utility on macOS, going back a couple decades.)

Tomero

Right. As it is now, if I have a PDF open in Zotero and have a collection selected, I have to tab into Zotero, tab or click back to the libraries pane (ctrl+shift+L doesn't work to focus the libraries pane), select the entire library and then ctrl+F to search all my references. I realize that what I'm asking isn't necessarily a critical function, but for me at least it would greatly improve the user experience. Unfortunately I am on Windows so Alfred is not an option. Even a way to have a keyboard shortcut to go straight to searching all references would be great.

dstillman

FWIW Ctrl-1 will take you to the first tab.

Tomero

Thanks

dstillman

We’ll likely have some improvements around this in the not-too-distant future, but for now you’d have to use some Windows utility to automate switching to Zotero and focusing the search bar in the library root.