Recoll GUI keyboard navigation

Using Recoll without the mouse is not completely straightforward, but it is mostly feasible. Here follows a description of the usable shortcuts.

Anywhere

Ctrl+q should exit Recoll from anywhere.

Main window and result list

When Recoll starts up, the focus is in the simple search entry. The main window tab order is as follows:

  • Clear

  • Search

  • Search type combo

  • Search entry (Initial focus)

  • Result list (scrolling etc)

  • Result list 1st link

  • Result list next links…​

  • Back to Clear

Each result list entry has 3 links: the icon link is not active, but its value is the URL, so that it can be dragged and dropped to another application. The 2 other links are Preview and Open and can be activated by typing Enter.

Typing Ctrl+Shift+s anywhere in the main window should return the focus to the search entry. So will Ctrl+l in future versions (for compatibility with WEB browser usage).

For pure keyboard usage, you can improve this by:

  • Disabling the icon link: use Preferences→GUI configuration→Result List→Edit result paragraph and remove the <a href='%U'> and </a> around the <img…​> tag.

  • Making the active link more visible by adding the following code to the result page HTML header insert (same preferences tab). Feel free to adjust the color :=) :

<style type="text/css">
a:focus {background-color: red;}
</style>

Result table

The same Ctrl+Shift+s will return the focus to the search entry when working with the result table.

Ctrl+r will move the focus from the entry to the spreadsheet. When in there the arrow keys will navigate the lines.

When a line is selected:

  • Ctrl+o or Enter will Open the document.

  • Ctrl+Shift+o will Open the document and exit Recoll.

  • Ctrl+d (detail) will start a Preview

Esc will deselect the current line so that mouse hovering will work again.