instantASSIST

Required skills

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INFO

instantASSIST has been rewritten in Rust and is now powered by ins assist (instantCLI). The legacy bash version is still shipping for instantWM, but other window managers use the Rust version.

instantOS comes with instantASSIST, a collection of small utilities that can be accessed using only a few keystrokes.

Access it using super+a. This will pop up a menu showing all available keystrokes. Press h to see a description of all available assists. Press one of them to activate the corresponding section. Some assists will have multiple options available. They will be displayed in the same menu. Press the key again to go with the default one, press one of the keys listed to execute the corresponding variant. These key chords are called assists.

For example: The w-assist consists of pressing super+a to activate the menu and then typing in w. The w-assist is responsible for quickly changing your wallpaper. It will list some other options. Press w again to execute the default action which is generating a new wallpaper from a random source.

The h-assist will list all available assists and their purposes.

When you are inside a group (like screenshots), press h to show help for that group (for example sh, not available on the legacy bash version).

Some assists rely on extra packages. If a dependency is missing, ins assist will prompt to install it before running the action.

Assist catalog

Single-key assists

Key	Action
h	Help: show all available assists
b	Brightness: adjust display brightness
c	Caffeine: keep system awake
a	Volume: adjust audio volume
m	Music: play or pause music
p	Password Manager: open password manager
q	QR Encode Clipboard: generate QR code from clipboard
e	Emoji Picker: open emoji picker
k	Color Picker: pick color from screen

Info assists (i)

Key	Action
ia	Ask Claude: ask Claude AI about clipboard content
ic	Ask ChatGPT: ask ChatGPT about clipboard content
ig	Ask Gemini: ask Google Gemini about clipboard content
im	Man Pages: search and view man pages

Jokes assists (j)

Key	Action
jb	Bruh: display a bruh moment
jc	CMatrix: run the Matrix rain
jq	Asciiquarium: launch the terminal aquarium

Screenshot assists (s)

Key	Action
sf	Fullscreen to Pictures: fullscreen screenshot to Pictures folder
sa	Screenshot and Annotate: take a screenshot with flameshot
sc	Screenshot to Clipboard: capture area to clipboard
si	Screenshot to Imgur: capture area and upload to Imgur
sm	Fullscreen to Clipboard: fullscreen screenshot to clipboard
sp	Area to Pictures: selected area screenshot to Pictures folder
sq	QR Code Scanner: scan QR code from selected area
sr	OCR Text Recognition: extract text from selected area

Tools assists (t)

Key	Action
tm	Mouse Speed: adjust mouse sensitivity

Media navigation assists (v)

Key	Action
vc	Control Media: select player to play or pause
vn	Next Track: go to next track
vp	Previous Track: go to previous track

Using ins assist from the terminal

You can run assists without the menu:

ins assist run sc
ins assist run ia

List all assists and key sequences:

ins assist list

Use the instantmenu frontend instead of the built-in chord UI:

ins assist --instantmenu