Quick Capture
Cmd+K, term, Enter — two keystrokes to the hit
- You open Quick Capture from anywhere with Cmd+K and land on the hit in under two seconds. ·· Success criterion: You find five given notes, each in under three seconds.
- You narrow hits with inline property filters (type:meeting, jahr:2026). ·· Success criterion: You phrase three filter searches correctly and hit the expected subset.
- You know when two keystrokes are enough and when arrow-down is needed. ·· Success criterion: You explain why recall @ position 1 = 87% can mean three keystrokes rather than two.
Cmd+K, term, Enter — block or page, in two keystrokes. The same search in the file explorer takes eight: open the window, click into the search box, choose the folder scope, type the filename, wait, open the file, search inside it for the term, land on the hit. mium shortens that chain to one keyboard shortcut and one search term.
Why tool search slows you down
Across 200 search sessions in a beta corpus of 1,200 pages, search-to-hit time in the file explorer averaged 14 seconds. Of those, 6 seconds went on the tab switch, 4 on narrowing the folder, 4 on opening and scrolling the matched file. Hits at block level — a single paragraph inside a wiki page, say — stay out of reach for the file explorer by design, because its granularity stops at the file.
5 rules for Quick Capture
- Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Linux and Windows) is the only way into search. No second input field in the sidebar, no magnifying glass in the toolbar.
- Full-text across everything — title, body, properties, comments. No opt-in toggles.
- Block and page hits are shown mixed together, with the block position as a sub-line beneath the page title.
- The most recently opened pages appear at the top the moment the search box is empty (recency bias as the default, not as a plugin).
- You type property filters inline — type:meeting, autor:team-mut, jahr:2026, with no dialogue and no builder.
Before and after — file-explorer search vs Cmd+K
| Step | File explorer | Cmd+K in mium |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Switch window, click into the search box | Cmd+K |
| Input | Type the filename | Type the term |
| Granularity | File | Block or page |
| Property filter | not available | inline (autor:, type:) |
| Keystrokes to the hit | 8 | 2 |
| Search-to-hit (median) | 14 sec | 1.2 sec |
An honest question
How long does it take you to find a note from three months ago? Not in the best case, but at the median over your last ten attempts. The answer decides whether Quick Capture is a comfort feature for you, or the precondition for that note still existing at all.
- Open mium, press Cmd+K and find five notes from the last few weeks, each in under three seconds — type the term, pick the hit, move on. When a hit is not at the top, practise the move arrow-down plus Enter until it is second nature. Then frame two inline property filters such as type:meeting and jahr:2026 and check that the hit list shrinks to the expected subset.⏱ 5 min
💡 Deliberately search for a term that appears in several notes — then you see how block and page hits show up mixed and how the property filter narrows the list.
Model answer: In four of five searches the hit sits at position 1, so the term and Enter are enough — two keystrokes. On the fifth, arrow-down nudges the focus one line lower, then Enter, three keystrokes. The filter type:meeting jahr:2026 turns the free search into a query and shows only the blocks that carry both properties — searching becomes finding.
How many keystrokes to the hit when it sits at position 1?
Two keystrokes to the thought.
Don't search — find. Your second brain brings back what you were thinking yesterday; a companion that thinks along with you, not a filing cabinet.
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