Snag help › Snag for the desktop

How Snag desktop works

One key opens a box that files a task, logs time or adds a note. A timer in the tray and the bar records time on this machine first, and syncs it after.

Snag desktop 0.7.0 runs on Linux, Wayland or X11, built and tested on Hyprland and Omarchy. Snag desktop for Mac is a menu-bar app for Apple silicon, with a small group of testers. About Snag desktop · The cheat sheet

1. Install it and sign in

   Build it from source, then run snag login and paste a personal access token from your Snag account. The token is kept in the desktop's secret service, never in a file.

   Installing

2. Bind the keys

   Snag has no global shortcuts of its own: your desktop runs snag commands. The Hyprland and Omarchy config in contrib/ puts them all on Super+Q.

   Keyboard shortcuts

3. Capture from a key

   Press Super+Q, type one line, press Enter. A task takes a #project, @label, +person, a priority and a due date, each highlighted as you type. Add ~45m to log time instead. Press it again for a note.

   Quick capture

4. Run the timer

   Super+Alt+Q starts and stops it. The tray, the timer window and the bar all drive the same timer. It works offline and counts across suspend, then syncs when the network is back.

   The timer

5. Say what idle time was

   After 6 minutes with no input, Snag asks when you are back: keep it, discard it, or move it to another task. Nothing is discarded without your say.

   Idle time

6. Check it with snag doctor

   snag doctor says what this machine can do, and what is missing, without changing anything.

   Troubleshooting

More

Optional, and off by default: observation records what you work on, on this machine only. Time from git history turns old commits into time entries, with a dry run first. Every setting is in Settings, every command in Command line, and every file in Where data goes.

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