Quick Start: Launch Sites and Add Shortcuts in Celerity

Open your first site with a keyboard shortcut, run a direct site search, and add a custom shortcut to Celerity — all in under two minutes.

Celerity is designed to be useful from the first keystroke. This guide walks you through the core workflow — launching a site, searching within it, falling back to Google, and navigating autocomplete — then shows you how to add your first custom shortcut. You do not need to memorise anything in advance; just follow the steps once and the patterns will stick.

Use the command launcher

1. Open a new tab

   Press Ctrl + T (or ⌘ T on macOS). Celerity loads automatically and displays your shortcut grid. The page is quiet by design — no search bar is visible until you need it.

2. Press any key to open the search bar

   Press any character key on your keyboard. The search bar appears instantly and the character you pressed is already in the input. You do not need to click anything.

   Press Escape at any time to close the search bar and return to the shortcut grid.

3. Launch a site with a shortcut key

   Type g and press Enter. Celerity navigates directly to Gmail.

   Try the other built-in shortcuts the same way:

   Type	Opens
   y	YouTube
   gh	GitHub
   r	Reddit
   a	Amazon

4. Search within a site

   Open a new tab, then type y javascript tutorial and press Enter. Celerity sends you straight to the YouTube search results for javascript tutorial — without opening YouTube first.

   The syntax is always: <shortcut key> + space + your query. Any shortcut that supports site search works the same way:

   g inbox                → searches Gmail for 'inbox'
   gh celerity            → searches GitHub for 'celerity'
   a mechanical keyboard  → searches Amazon for 'mechanical keyboard'
   
5. Fall back to Google search

   Type any text that does not match a shortcut key — for example best mechanical keyboards — and press Enter. Celerity automatically runs a Google search for the query. You never need to type a URL or switch to another tab to search.

6. Navigate autocomplete suggestions

   As you type, Celerity shows up to four autocomplete suggestions below the input. Use any of these keys to move through them:

   Key	Action
   ↓ / Tab / Ctrl + N	Move to next suggestion
   ↑ / Shift + Tab / Ctrl + P	Move to previous suggestion
   Enter	Execute the highlighted suggestion
   Escape	Close the search bar

   Press Enter on a suggestion to execute it, or keep typing to refine the query.

Add your first custom shortcut

You can map any key to any URL in seconds. Open the shortcut settings using either method below:

• Click the gear icon (⚙) in the top-right corner of the new tab page, or
• Press Alt + + (the plus key, with Alt held) from anywhere on the new tab page — this opens settings and focuses the key field of the new-shortcut row directly.

1. Locate the 'add new' row

   The shortcut settings panel shows your existing shortcuts as editable rows. The last row has three empty input fields — Key, Name, and URL — ready for a new entry.

2. Fill in the fields

   Click into the Key field (or skip straight to typing if you used Alt + +) and fill in all three fields:

   Field	Example	Notes
   Key	hn	The shortcut you will type; any string works
   Name	Hacker News	Displayed on the grid tile
   URL	https://news.ycombinator.com	The destination; bare domains like hackernews.com are expanded to https:// automatically

3. Save the shortcut

   Press Enter in any field, or click the + button at the end of the row. The new tile appears on the shortcut grid immediately.

If the key you choose already exists, Celerity asks you to confirm before overriding the existing shortcut. You can cancel and pick a different key instead.

Explore further

Using shortcuts

Learn every way to use the built-in shortcuts, including site search syntax and URL pass-through.

Managing shortcuts

Add, edit, delete, and reorder shortcuts, and import or export your full configuration as JSON.