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Show HN: Pie Menu – a radial menu for macOS

309 points by hauken 2y ago

Hi everyone! I'm Marius Hauken, an indie developer, and I'm excited to share my app: Pie Menu. It offers a fresh way to access your favorite menu bar commands and keyboard shortcuts on macOS. By simply pressing a hotkey you choose during setup, a radial menu appears around your cursor, customized to the current active application. This allows you to quickly select commands without having to remember complex shortcuts across different applications. Pie Menu comes with a library of preprogrammed commands for popular apps, but you can easily add any app on your computer. We've also created an extensive database at https://www.pie-menu.com/shortcuts https://www.pie-menu.com/shortcuts where you can quickly add shortcuts for different programs. If a command lacks a keyboard shortcut, you can always create one through System Preferences > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts. For now, you can use Apple’s SF Symbols to label your commands, but we plan to include custom symbol sets in the future. You can see and vote on our roadmap at https://www.pie-menu.com/help/roadmap https://www.pie-menu.com/help/roadmap. I hope you give Pie Menu a try and find it as useful as I intended!

xnx 2y ago
Pie menus discussed 6 months ago, 69 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966
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warrenm 2y ago
Happy to see someone implementing something along the lines of what I wrote an essay on years back - https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1086454 https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1086454
- hauken 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing! The ideas are still relevant today! In fact the first documented radial menu is attributed to a system called PIXIE in 1969 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu
  - warrenm 2y ago
    My first CS prof (~2000) talked about a circular interface he used on some navy gear back in the early/mid 70s (complete with round screens)
  - j45 2y ago
    Interesting, I wonder how there are so many radial menu patents when this clearly invalidates them. https://patents.google.com/?q=(radial+menu)&oq=radial+menu https://patents.google.com/?q=(radial+menu)&oq=radial+menu
    - hauken 2y ago
      Didn’t know! I’ve just thought that this was a common pattern along with tab bars and other menu items.
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    - DonHopkins 2y ago
      Alias was granted an illegitimate software patent on radial menus that was an abuse of the patent system, because Bill Buxton and Gordon Kurtenbach knowingly omitted information about prior art and made false and misleading claims that contradicted detailed information about my own pie menus implementations that I'd provided to them previously. They dishonestly abused the patent system by spreading "FUD" and successfully discouraged other products like 3D Studio Max and open source projects like Blender from using them for many years. Fortunately their patent has long expired, and Blender supports pie menus quite well now. Pie Menu FUD and Misconceptions. Dispelling the fear, uncertainty, doubt and misconceptions about pie menus. https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menu-fud-and-misconceptions-be8afc49d870 https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menu-fud-and-misconception... Patent Abuse Example: US Patent US5689667A: Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions Unfortunately a bad patent that covered an obvious technique, and also made some incorrect misleading claims, was abused by Alias marketing in Bill Buxton’s name to baselessly threaten and discouraged others from using pie or marking menus, by exaggerating its scope and obfuscating its specificity. It’s my strong opinion that the particular technique that it covered (overflow items) was quite obvious. Gordon Kurtenbach and I discussed pie and marking menus in 1990 before he wrote his paper and filed the patent, and at that time he made it clear that he understood pie menus supported mouse ahead display suppression, and that pie menus enjoyed the same benefits as marking menus have in easing the transition from novice to expert user: “The the cool thing is that expert can mouse ahead like you’ve talked about but they get an ink trail so they have a better idea what they’ve selected without even bothering to wait for the menu to come up.” -Gordon Kurtenbach However that contradicts what the paper and the patent implies, and it’s misled other people into incorrectly believing that pie menus don’t support what I call “mouse ahead display preemption” (or “suppression”, a harsher word), and that the patent covers much more than it actually does. When Gordon applied for the patent on in 1995, which his employment contract with SGI required him to do, the patent had at least two misleading statements, and the “overflow” technique claim was obvious, which should have prevented it from being granted or invalidated it. Another piece of mistaken but published misinformation about the differences of “typical pie menus” and marking menus is that “typical pie menus” pop up submenus after the cursor has moved a certain distance from the menu center, without clicking the mouse button. However, I have never seen nor implemented such badly designed pie menus in the real world. Dumbold Voting Machine Pie Menu in The Sims “Typical pie menus” (such as those in The Sims, played by hundreds of millions of people) have always selected leaf and submenu items by triggering on a button press or release (or pen or finger tap or release). They also typically support mouse-ahead. Pie menus can seamlessly support both quick press-drag-release gestures, as well as the more leisurely click-move-click gestures. The patent US5689667A “Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions” also makes the mistake of claiming that that pie menu selection is based on pointing at the items like linear menus (or PIXIE), instead of the direction of cursor motion, which Kurtenbach and Buxton know very well is simply not the case with “typical pie menus”. “Radial menus include two types: pie menus and marking menus. Pie menus are typically used in item selection using the location principles of linear menus as discussed above. Marking menus operate on the principle of the direction of cursor or pointer motion as being the basis for item selection.” -US Patent US5689667A Unfortunately they were able to successfully deceive the patent reviewers, even though the patent references the Dr. Dobb’s Journal article which clearly describes how pie menu selection and mouse ahead work, contradicting the incorrect claims in the patent. It’s sad that this kind of deception and patent trolling is all too common in the industry, and it causes so many problems. Even today, long after the patent has expired, Autodesk marketing brochures continue to spread FUD to scare other people away from using marking menus, by bragging that “Patented marking menus let you use context-sensitive gestures to select commands.”
- ndespres 2y ago
  Don Hopkins, who also posts here, has an interesting essay on the design and implementations of pie menus from 1991: https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-design-and-implementation-of-pie-menus-80db1e1b5293 https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-design-and-implementation-...
- jerrygoyal 2y ago
  argument against the radial menu: the circle partially blocks multiple rows of text content behind that. A single-row menu can be placed above / below the cursor (with margin) blocking only one line of content. Also, adding/removing menu items doesn't change the dimension of other menu items unlike in radial menu.
marcodiego 2y ago
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saagarjha 2y ago
(Disclaimer: I’m on mobile and definitely haven’t used this yet.) I feel like the problem of “I don’t know the shortcut to do this” is solved for my by hitting ⌘? And searching the menus for a keyword, then hitting enter. How do you see this as improving upon that? Is this something you have to set up per app? Because if it doesn’t automatically populate its options with actions I use a lot but don’t use the shortcut for that seems like a miss :)
- hauken 2y ago
  You set up the frequent shortcuts you want for each app: This way you can quickly switch between different modes or tools in your different apps by only remembering one shortcut.
- MarcScott 2y ago
  Like me, you seem to like to drive your computer with the keyboard and use the mouse when necessary. I use the Windows key to open applications on Windows, Cmd+Space on MacOS, and Mod+d on my i3 nixOS machine. Some people like their mouse/trackpad though, and this seems like a useful tool for those that do.
  - pazimzadeh 2y ago
    it would be cool to have an options to show the shortcut under the icon in the radial menu so that over time you learn it, and over time can replace items on the menu to ones you still don't have memorized
  - diatone 2y ago
    Agree, there are pointer-centric patterns of computer use. Usually visual things: art, design, some CAD, marketing, and of course the GUI patterns of personal computer use that most people have been taught
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    You still have to use a keyboard shortcut to activate this, though?
- 2y ago
ilyagr 2y ago
A cross-platform pie menu: https://github.com/kando-menu/kando https://github.com/kando-menu/kando I haven't used it, but the readme seems very nice. It might be more focused on app launching.
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- viraptor 2y ago
  It's based on Electron though. It's literally spawning a new browser to show you a ring of icons...
Fnoord 2y ago
See also: Opie addon in World of Warcraft. Does not feel intuitive with mouse (too slow) but keybinds / touch, sure.
- wonger_ 2y ago
  Agreed, I've been trying a pie menu launcher for mobile, and it's nifty: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.markusfisch.android.pielauncher/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.markusfisch.android.piela... I like how I can swipe to open apps without looking. For desktop, I've already customized a keyboard-driven workflow that's hard to beat. So a pie menu doesn't make much sense there for me.
junglistguy 2y ago
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pomdtr 2y ago
Another alternative is the "Search Menu Items" command from raycast: https://www.raycast.com/changelog/1-20-0 https://www.raycast.com/changelog/1-20-0
- nsonha 2y ago
  Why do you need Raycast for this, isn't there a built-in shortcut Cmd+? or something?
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  - pomdtr 2y ago
    `cmd+?` works, but it's visually quite hard to follow. The raycast version looks much more like an universal command palette, and supports fuzzy matching. You can also pin menu items for each apps.
lancesells 2y ago
One of the best things I've ever used in a program is Autodesk Maya's Hotbox. I even went so far as designing a Flash website where the user interface was a riff on that. I'm going to have to check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q06HN5dXzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q06HN5dXzI
- fragmede 2y ago
  Fusion 360 also features pie menus for certain functions. quite handy and I wish more places used them. especially the homescreen on my phone - just go home then put a finger down then go up then right to open whatever preconfigured app is there.
- layer8 2y ago
  That looks more usable than pie menus to me. Somehow I‘m an orthogonal-grid person and perceive radial movements as too finicky to perform accurately.
  - thr33 2y ago
    this approach is definitely more usable. radial menus only make ergonomic sense on ie game controllers. with a mouse it becomes a high precision action to use, plus poor accessibility because it doesnt conform to the standard box model.
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NaOH 2y ago
I can't try this because my OS version is too old. I'm confident the app marketing, specifically the idea "Your favorite shortcuts at your mousetip!," is appropriate for how most would use it, though my case would be different. My first thought was how this would be helpful for the app commands I use just enough to want quickly accessible but not often enough that I remember the keyboard shortcuts. I'll give this a try when my Mac/OS are compatible. Best of luck.
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ljm 2y ago
Reminds me a bit of the Surface Dial. Really liked that concept even if I’d never have the sort of setup that would benefit from it.
- j45 2y ago
  I was thinking about that too. I think logitech or someone else has a device or software too?
  - seltzered_ 2y ago
    Griffin had the PowerMate going back to 2001: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin_PowerMate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin_PowerMate
  - vasac 2y ago
    Logitech mouse driver had something similar — the middle button (which was configurable) used to show a 3x3 grid of icons that you could click or simply release the mouse button over. This allowed you to easily close or minimize windows (I never used anything else, so I don't remember what other functions it had). However, a few years later, they removed it from the driver, and Windows 7 couldn't use the older driver. So, I made a AutoHotkey script that displayed the same grid as a plain jpeg and then activated some action depending on the mouse coordinates within that image.
k__ 2y ago
Don't quite understand why not more mobile apps have a radial menu. Seems like a reasonable choice for one-thumb controls.
- j45 2y ago
  Agree, it's very handy and natural .. also existed in many forms. The lack of seeing this may be an patent issue where a patent for a radial menu needs to be invalidated. Pie menus existed back in the 60's, before the patents, lots of examples in this thread. And for what it's wroth, I'm glad this thing exists, because people should be able to see it and say 'oh yeah, this is like the buttons on my remote control"
- ks2048 2y ago
  I'd guess one issue is the number of items. Radial probably only works for 6 or less. With a scrollable list, any number would work (And many popups have a variable number of options).
- jandrese 2y ago
  One downside is your thumb is always going to obscure at least one of the options.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    You don't need to make it a full circle. Fan menus are also good. https://cuppalabs.github.io/angular-fan-menu/ https://cuppalabs.github.io/angular-fan-menu/
    - jandrese 2y ago
      This assumes the phone knows what angle your finger is coming in from. Even if you assume it is coming in from the bottom half that introduces problems when the hit point is near the top of the screen.
      - viraptor 2y ago
tinkertell 2y ago
Personally I‘m using BetterTouchTool‘s floating menus for this. These are very powerful because they are fully scriptable and can be triggered in many different ways (although the docs are still very basic, most useful info is on their community forum). Here is a nice window management preset I have been using for some time now: https://community.folivora.ai/t/mouse-window-menu-mwm-window-management-via-floating-menu/33055 https://community.folivora.ai/t/mouse-window-menu-mwm-window...
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- josters 2y ago
  This preset is great and gets really natural quite quickly. Just hold down the right mouse button and wait for the menu to appear, then release it at the desired option. I have adapted the window management menu to commands specific to whatever app I am using as well as global ones.
  - swah 2y ago
    I was going to say that - this interaction would work better starting from the mouse itself. Can always use Steermouse mapped to a shortcut though..
donatj 2y ago
I used to use a similar app where you'd spin your mouse in a circle and it'd pop open a radial menu in the center of the circle you drew. It was kinda neat, I forget the name of it.
lagniappe 2y ago
This just makes sense
idle_zealot 2y ago
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nerdjon 2y ago
It looks cool, this is not a critique of your work just something I have noticed about myself and curious if others have. I don't know why but I have long struggled with using icons to mark a task. There are certain ones that are so engrained like a floppy disk to save, a plus mark for a new tab, reload symbol, home symbol, or other very obvious ones. Or ones that are just the logo for a brand, those are easy to remember. But especially as we moved away from skeuomorphism (which thankfully bits and pieces of it are combing back, without it being bashed over the head with, like with the apple pencil UI) this got a lot harder for me. And I see this, and and I just know that I am going to have to look at all 6 going in a circle to find the one I want every time. I experienced this recently where I wanted to put a Shortcut (from the Mac App) on my toolbar in finder. My only option is to show icon only, text only, or both. I can't say, I want to have both for some things. I am curious if anyone else has struggle with symbols. Basically it seems like for me, the only symbols I remember are the ones that are so obvious (I guess) that it couldn't possible be something else. Or its universal across most/all apps. Even apps that I use daily, if its a symbol unique to that app I am still going to go top to bottom or left to right mousing over until I find the one I am looking for.
- ppbjj 2y ago
  Similar thoughts. I use a few of the apps listed on the site frequently and this would take me awhile to master. Super cool idea though.
- KaiMagnus 2y ago
  No, you're most certainly not alone. Very few icons are intuitively understandable, although even the folks at Nielsen Norman have trouble backing that up with data (as linked below). What immediately came to my mind was Autodesk Maya, where they have similar menus that use text only labels (see the screenshot from their manual). They have a lot of very abstract and complicated features, so every bit of usability counts. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-8BA1A3AA-4C44-4779-8B22-0AAE3627E8EB https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-8B...
- jandrese 2y ago
kaeruct 2y ago
I liked the preview feature on the website, but shift + z is a horrible shortcut on a German keyboard. Just thought I'd let you know.
- hauken 2y ago
  Thanks! I’ve had a lot of doubts with the preview feature. Browsers won’t let you reliably use cmd/option for the same effect to preview it, so landed on shift + z. But in the app you can’t use that shortcut because it would trigger every time you write something with capital Z.
herpdyderp 2y ago
What’s the free tier like? I see no explanation of that but it’s free with in-app “unlimited access” purchases.
- hauken 2y ago
  Free tier is 10 shortcut invocations a day before it resets next day. You could also try a 7 day free trial if you pick the yearly subscription (you can then directly cancel in App store and not pay) Here is more on the pricing: https://www.pie-menu.com/help/pricing https://www.pie-menu.com/help/pricing But as you say I haven’t written about the free tier there.
gwbas1c 2y ago
Uhm, isn't this what command (right) click is supposed to do?
hammerbrostime 2y ago
Hi, I had some initial trouble where I kept selecting all the text on the website when I shift-z-clicked. This is easily fixed by making text unselectable on your site via CSS. I wouldn't recommend everyone use it for their entire site, but I think in your case it will make a better demo. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/826782/how-to-disable-text-selection-highlighting https://stackoverflow.com/questions/826782/how-to-disable-te...
- hauken 2y ago
  Thanks! I haven’t noticed that problem! Will try it out!
  - geon 2y ago
    Add the style only while the menu is up. I had to do something similar a while ago to implement drag&drop while keeping text selectable.
iAkashPaul 2y ago
Hey Marius, cool project! Would this work with just the middle mouse button click too?
- hauken 2y ago
  Yes, as long as you can trigger a keyboard shortcut from the middle mouse click. With help of better touch tool or others you can also trigger it with three finger tap on your trackpad: https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options
ericyd 2y ago
Just a heads up, the marketing site has really bad scroll performance on Android Firefox.
- hauken 2y ago
  Thanks! I should test it more thoroughly. Wrapping a couple of the blurs and masks in @supports will probably quickly fix a couple of the issues.
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ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
That's nice! I wrote a Swift package that does a similar thing (but as an iOS widget): https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner My own experience, is that I keep on not using it in my projects. It's too much of an "in your face" widget. I was going to do a SwiftUI version of it, but stopped working on it, when I figured out that I probably wouldn't use it. I suspect that MacOS, with the cursor-oriented navigation, is a better home for it.
- hauken 2y ago
  Nice! I’ve noticed that I tend to use Pie Menu myself on apps where I frequently switch tools. Like Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator etc. Or for apps that have different modes: like Calendar (today, week, month), Things (today, inbox++), Obsidian (daily note, graph view, backlinks). For other apps where the keyboard shortcuts acts more as other shortcuts I don’t use it as much.
  - wyclif 2y ago
    This is nice, but one thing I immediately noticed that I think would improve the landing page is to make the shift and "z" keys look like Apple keyboard keys. EDIT: I know a lot of Mac users have HHKBs or whatever, so they are not actually pressing Apple keys, but I think it would make the page seem more Apple-oriented.
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    Pie menus work quite well for selecting tools, as an alternative to the tool palette. Here are pie menus in SimCity for X11 (from around 1992): X11 SimCity Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA Here's a demo of a more recent version for Flash from around 2009, which demonstrates how the pie menus serve as a much quicker alternative to the tool palette: Micropolis Online (SimCity) Web Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE And of course The Sims 1 uses pie menus too. The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs
rendx 2y ago
Nice idea! On German keyboards, Z and Y are swapped, so holding SHIFT-Z is not very convenient. You may want to allow both for your demo.
- hauken 2y ago
  The things you learn! Good idea: easy fix to allow both on the website.
worldmerge 2y ago
Nice job on the website! That’s sick!
bitwize 2y ago
Did you know that Hackernews' own DonHopkins implemented pie menus for his X11 port of SimCity?
dylan604 2y ago
This is one of those things that is interesting but I don't immediately dis-like it like so many other ideas looking for a problem to solve. Being that it is so new, the one thing that strikes me immediately is the use of icons instead of text. I get that it looks good design-wise, but now my mind has to remember the icons. Some of the actions are short words where text could be used and not be cluttered: Move, Copy, Scale, etc. Maybe as an option? Also, would it be possible to have a different trigger than keyboard keys? If I'm hitting keyboard modifier to enable this, I'll just hit the shortcut keys directly. What about middle-click (3-finger click on macOS multi-touch or something) equivalent to enable so that it is entirely mouse driven?
- Terretta 2y ago
  > Being that it is so new, the one thing that strikes me immediately is the use of icons instead of text. That's so you don't confuse it with a right-click pop-up menu. :-)
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I think the round ring surrounding the cursor is taking care of that in and of itself.
- thr33 2y ago
  using text would lay bare the silliness of the radial menu pattern - it either wouldnt fit neatly into the circular containers or, if conformed to the curvature of the radial menu, would be unreadable/low accessibility
  - dylan604 2y ago
    i strongly disagree: https://imgur.com/a/oi5Rxz1 https://imgur.com/a/oi5Rxz1
    - eviks 2y ago
      You disagree that search mirrored is poorly readable?
BiteCode_dev 2y ago
Always liked the Secret of Mana circular menu, but could never find a really good way of porting that to a computer.
- kayson 2y ago
  The menu sounds haunt my nightmares
  - vanderZwan 2y ago
    Hahaha, if you cast a ton of spells it does get a little "menu spammy" near the end, doesn't it? :D
numbers 2y ago
Love it! installed thru SetApp :)
o-o- 2y ago
Nice work – radial menus are so underrated. A feature request is to allow the menu to ride along the cursor trajectory, effectively evolving the menu into a gesture GUI. I made an attempt at an svg implementation eight years ago: https://rawgit.com/lgrkvst/d3-sunburst-menu/master/demo/d3-sunburst-demo.html https://rawgit.com/lgrkvst/d3-sunburst-menu/master/demo/d3-s...
- Terretta 2y ago
  Someone showed one of these here a few months ago, with a sequence of gestures diving deeper into a menu tree. The idea started out great but hit a wall every time you tried to gesture near an edge. It also felt as though you were playing Witcher 3 casting spells...
- benatkin 2y ago
  I think they might be accurately rated. If they were underrated perhaps they would have flourished after iPhone/Android came out (more for the coolness factor than the utility factor, since on mobile they have the issue of something being blocked by your finger, which I think limits it but isn't a dealbreaker). However, donut chart menus haven't been catching on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966 I think they're cool, and that's about it, that the Fitts's Law benefit is too small (as argued in the thread I linked), and that the coolness factor fades fairly quickly for most (though I still want some sometimes). Edit: if it's straightforward to port https://github.com/kando-menu/kando https://github.com/kando-menu/kando from electron to Tauri that might be interesting. https://github.com/kando-menu/kando/issues/410 https://github.com/kando-menu/kando/issues/410
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    We performed a controlled empirical comparison of pie vs linear menus in 1988, which we presented at CHI'88 and published in the proceedings. It showed that pie menus were 15% faster than linear menus, and that they had a significantly lower error rate. An Empirical Comparison of Pie vs. Linear Menus. Presented at ACM CHI’88 Conference, Washington DC, 1988. https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie-vs-linear-menus-466c6fdbba4b https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie... [...] Conclusions What does this mean? Should we program pie menus into our bitmapped window systems tomorrow and expect a 15–20% increase in productivity since users can select items slightly faster with pie menus. Pie menus seem promising, but more experiments are needed before issuing a strong recommendation. First, this experiment only addresses fixed length menus, in particular, menus consisting of 8 items — no more, no less. Secondly, there remains the problem of increased screen real estate usage, In one trial a subject complained because the pie menu obscured his view of the target prompt message. Finally, the questionnaire showed that the subjects were almost evenly divided between pie and linear menus in subjective satisfaction. Many found it difficult to “home in on” a particular item because of the unusual activation region characteristics of the pie menu. One assumption of this study concerns the use of a mouse/cursor control device and the use of pop-up style menus (as opposed to menus invoked from a fixed screen location or permanent menus). Certainly, pie menus can and in fact have been incorporated to use keyed input [7] and fixed “pull-down” style presentation (the pie menu becomes a semicircle menu). These variations are areas for further research.
geon 2y ago
The demo on the website is very cute and a bit unexpected.
Terretta 2y ago
Where this is most helpful is: Vision Pro. After all, this UI and "gesture" is how you calibrate it ...
atum47 2y ago
I've made one these for the web a few years ago https://github.com/victorqribeiro/radialMenu https://github.com/victorqribeiro/radialMenu I was going to rewrite it using it SVG instead of canvas but never came around to it
- hauken 2y ago
  Nice! That would have probably saved me a lot of time when implementing on the website instead of trial and error. Current version on the website is however only done with CSS (and React).
tambourine_man 2y ago
Scrolling the website is painful in Safari latest
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vegasje 2y ago
Have you considered displaying the text representation of the currently-hovered menu item inside the center of the circle? Or if the text wouldn't fit, then above/below the circle?
- hauken 2y ago
  It already shows the text of the currently-hovered menu item inside the center of the circle. See examples here: https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options
inopinatus 2y ago
Add DualShock/DualSense bindings and I'm sold.
ji_zai 2y ago
This is so creative and super useful!
bluSCALE4 2y ago
Interesting app. Going to give it a spin. I like the 10 use model demo. FYI, for a moment, I thought it was a sub only app and was upset. Glad you have a fixed price option. Is lifetime in air quotes or will it really be lifetime?
- hauken 2y ago
  My intention is lifetime without air quotes
grishka 2y ago
A bug report: the demo on the website doesn't work when you have a non-Latin (e.g. Cyrillic) keyboard layout active.
- hauken 2y ago
  Thanks. Didn't think of that. Do you have a suggestion of what character I could use for Cyrillic keyboard layout or others?
  - grishka 2y ago
    Ideally, you shouldn't rely on characters for this, you should instead use the key code (which is 90 for z/я), which identifies the physical key on the keyboard as opposed to its corresponding character in the current layout. Here's a useful tool for finding out key codes: https://www.toptal.com/developers/keycode https://www.toptal.com/developers/keycode
titchard 2y ago
I really like the idea, but as a left handed person I found it needed to have a keyboard shortcut accessible from the right hand (maybe this can be an option in the menu?)
- hauken 2y ago
  In the onboarding you can set your own preferred keyboard shortcut.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  I find the whole concept of it requiring a keyboard shortcut to activate a bit strange — that will, typically, require me to move my hand from the mouse to the keyboard and back again. I'm surprised there isn't gesture support.
thiht 2y ago
Are there plans to make Pie Menu available on Homebrew? I don't install anything from the App Store on mac.
- hauken 2y ago
  No. Not at the moment. We're currently only available in the App Store or in Setapp. Though you could install it via: $ brew install mas $ mas install 1631568126
swah 2y ago
Similar to https://charmstone.app/ https://charmstone.app/ but I really enjoy your "contextual" config. I wish it was dynamic somehow, though..
- hauken 2y ago
  Could you elaborate what you mean by dynamic?
  - swah 2y ago
    That the options were populated smartly, with menu information / AI etc :) Removing the unwanted ones is easy :)
neilv 2y ago
I thought "pie menu" was the generic term, going back a few decades. Not a brand name implementation of a generic term "radial menu" like the headline suggests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu
markatkinson 2y ago
Lovely website and what looks like a lovely app. Will download and give it a try!
yborg 2y ago
So for Adobe apps, for which this would be very useful, they install by default as Adobe <appname> <year>, i.e. "Adobe Photoshop 2023". I have several revisions installed for most of them for various reasons. When I attempt to add a shortcut from pie-menu.com, it tells me "Application adobe photoshop is not installed on your computer" :(
- deleted 2y ago
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- hauken 2y ago
  Yes. We’re having some issues with Adobe apps on some Macs. We hope to have a fix out for that soon!
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  I've petitioned Adobe to support pie menus in their products, but it's fallen on deaf ears. Here's a 12-year-old thread about “Crowd funding project: Marking menus for Photoshop and other software” that I recently ran across, and wrote a reply to, providing more information and links, and correcting some old misinformation. https://polycount.com/discussion/96932/crowd-funding-project-marking-menus-for-photoshop-and-other-software https://polycount.com/discussion/96932/crowd-funding-project... Crowd funding project: Marking menus for Photoshop and other software vertigo__ polycounter lvl 11 Offline / Send Messagevertigo__ polycounter lvl 11 Mar 2012 Recently I was telling a buddy of mine about how I hate digging through the standard menus in some software like Photoshop. In Maya or Zbrush I am used to creating either marking menus or custom palettes that allow me to assign multiple related commands to one hotkey. This is useful for organization and also more efficient than having one command assigned to one hotkey. He mentioned that he made an attempt to address this for Illustrator and wanted to expand the Idea to work with any software. He wants to generate $1000 to hire a programmer to help with the stuff that is outside his scope of knowledge. I figured there are probably others out there like us and I might find some like minded people here. Here is his pitch: http://www.indiegogo.com/unipie http://www.indiegogo.com/unipie Maybe people would like to pitch in ideas or gui designs too?
fireant 2y ago
I've been using radial menu from Charmstone to switch apps on macos for about half a year and it's a really great paradign. Never could memorize too many shortcuts for switching apps but this is just as fast. I wish there was a high quality app for windows that did this.

309 points by hauken 2y ago

xnx 2y ago

Pie menus discussed 6 months ago, 69 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966

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warrenm 2y ago

Happy to see someone implementing something along the lines of what I wrote an essay on years back - https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1086454 https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1086454

hauken 2y ago
Thanks for sharing! The ideas are still relevant today! In fact the first documented radial menu is attributed to a system called PIXIE in 1969 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu
- warrenm 2y ago
  My first CS prof (~2000) talked about a circular interface he used on some navy gear back in the early/mid 70s (complete with round screens)
- j45 2y ago
  Interesting, I wonder how there are so many radial menu patents when this clearly invalidates them. https://patents.google.com/?q=(radial+menu)&oq=radial+menu https://patents.google.com/?q=(radial+menu)&oq=radial+menu
  - hauken 2y ago
    Didn’t know! I’ve just thought that this was a common pattern along with tab bars and other menu items.
    - deleted 2y ago
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  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    Alias was granted an illegitimate software patent on radial menus that was an abuse of the patent system, because Bill Buxton and Gordon Kurtenbach knowingly omitted information about prior art and made false and misleading claims that contradicted detailed information about my own pie menus implementations that I'd provided to them previously. They dishonestly abused the patent system by spreading "FUD" and successfully discouraged other products like 3D Studio Max and open source projects like Blender from using them for many years. Fortunately their patent has long expired, and Blender supports pie menus quite well now. Pie Menu FUD and Misconceptions. Dispelling the fear, uncertainty, doubt and misconceptions about pie menus. https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menu-fud-and-misconceptions-be8afc49d870 https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menu-fud-and-misconception... Patent Abuse Example: US Patent US5689667A: Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions Unfortunately a bad patent that covered an obvious technique, and also made some incorrect misleading claims, was abused by Alias marketing in Bill Buxton’s name to baselessly threaten and discouraged others from using pie or marking menus, by exaggerating its scope and obfuscating its specificity. It’s my strong opinion that the particular technique that it covered (overflow items) was quite obvious. Gordon Kurtenbach and I discussed pie and marking menus in 1990 before he wrote his paper and filed the patent, and at that time he made it clear that he understood pie menus supported mouse ahead display suppression, and that pie menus enjoyed the same benefits as marking menus have in easing the transition from novice to expert user: “The the cool thing is that expert can mouse ahead like you’ve talked about but they get an ink trail so they have a better idea what they’ve selected without even bothering to wait for the menu to come up.” -Gordon Kurtenbach However that contradicts what the paper and the patent implies, and it’s misled other people into incorrectly believing that pie menus don’t support what I call “mouse ahead display preemption” (or “suppression”, a harsher word), and that the patent covers much more than it actually does. When Gordon applied for the patent on in 1995, which his employment contract with SGI required him to do, the patent had at least two misleading statements, and the “overflow” technique claim was obvious, which should have prevented it from being granted or invalidated it. Another piece of mistaken but published misinformation about the differences of “typical pie menus” and marking menus is that “typical pie menus” pop up submenus after the cursor has moved a certain distance from the menu center, without clicking the mouse button. However, I have never seen nor implemented such badly designed pie menus in the real world. Dumbold Voting Machine Pie Menu in The Sims “Typical pie menus” (such as those in The Sims, played by hundreds of millions of people) have always selected leaf and submenu items by triggering on a button press or release (or pen or finger tap or release). They also typically support mouse-ahead. Pie menus can seamlessly support both quick press-drag-release gestures, as well as the more leisurely click-move-click gestures. The patent US5689667A “Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions” also makes the mistake of claiming that that pie menu selection is based on pointing at the items like linear menus (or PIXIE), instead of the direction of cursor motion, which Kurtenbach and Buxton know very well is simply not the case with “typical pie menus”. “Radial menus include two types: pie menus and marking menus. Pie menus are typically used in item selection using the location principles of linear menus as discussed above. Marking menus operate on the principle of the direction of cursor or pointer motion as being the basis for item selection.” -US Patent US5689667A Unfortunately they were able to successfully deceive the patent reviewers, even though the patent references the Dr. Dobb’s Journal article which clearly describes how pie menu selection and mouse ahead work, contradicting the incorrect claims in the patent. It’s sad that this kind of deception and patent trolling is all too common in the industry, and it causes so many problems. Even today, long after the patent has expired, Autodesk marketing brochures continue to spread FUD to scare other people away from using marking menus, by bragging that “Patented marking menus let you use context-sensitive gestures to select commands.”
ndespres 2y ago
Don Hopkins, who also posts here, has an interesting essay on the design and implementations of pie menus from 1991: https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-design-and-implementation-of-pie-menus-80db1e1b5293 https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-design-and-implementation-...
jerrygoyal 2y ago
argument against the radial menu: the circle partially blocks multiple rows of text content behind that. A single-row menu can be placed above / below the cursor (with margin) blocking only one line of content. Also, adding/removing menu items doesn't change the dimension of other menu items unlike in radial menu.

marcodiego 2y ago

[flagged]

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saagarjha 2y ago

(Disclaimer: I’m on mobile and definitely haven’t used this yet.) I feel like the problem of “I don’t know the shortcut to do this” is solved for my by hitting ⌘? And searching the menus for a keyword, then hitting enter. How do you see this as improving upon that? Is this something you have to set up per app? Because if it doesn’t automatically populate its options with actions I use a lot but don’t use the shortcut for that seems like a miss :)

hauken 2y ago
You set up the frequent shortcuts you want for each app: This way you can quickly switch between different modes or tools in your different apps by only remembering one shortcut.
MarcScott 2y ago
Like me, you seem to like to drive your computer with the keyboard and use the mouse when necessary. I use the Windows key to open applications on Windows, Cmd+Space on MacOS, and Mod+d on my i3 nixOS machine. Some people like their mouse/trackpad though, and this seems like a useful tool for those that do.
- pazimzadeh 2y ago
  it would be cool to have an options to show the shortcut under the icon in the radial menu so that over time you learn it, and over time can replace items on the menu to ones you still don't have memorized
- diatone 2y ago
  Agree, there are pointer-centric patterns of computer use. Usually visual things: art, design, some CAD, marketing, and of course the GUI patterns of personal computer use that most people have been taught
- saagarjha 2y ago
  You still have to use a keyboard shortcut to activate this, though?
2y ago

ilyagr 2y ago

A cross-platform pie menu: https://github.com/kando-menu/kando https://github.com/kando-menu/kando I haven't used it, but the readme seems very nice. It might be more focused on app launching.

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viraptor 2y ago
It's based on Electron though. It's literally spawning a new browser to show you a ring of icons...

Fnoord 2y ago

See also: Opie addon in World of Warcraft. Does not feel intuitive with mouse (too slow) but keybinds / touch, sure.

wonger_ 2y ago
Agreed, I've been trying a pie menu launcher for mobile, and it's nifty: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.markusfisch.android.pielauncher/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.markusfisch.android.piela... I like how I can swipe to open apps without looking. For desktop, I've already customized a keyboard-driven workflow that's hard to beat. So a pie menu doesn't make much sense there for me.

junglistguy 2y ago

[dead]

pomdtr 2y ago

Another alternative is the "Search Menu Items" command from raycast: https://www.raycast.com/changelog/1-20-0 https://www.raycast.com/changelog/1-20-0

nsonha 2y ago
Why do you need Raycast for this, isn't there a built-in shortcut Cmd+? or something?
- deleted 2y ago
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- pomdtr 2y ago
  `cmd+?` works, but it's visually quite hard to follow. The raycast version looks much more like an universal command palette, and supports fuzzy matching. You can also pin menu items for each apps.

lancesells 2y ago

One of the best things I've ever used in a program is Autodesk Maya's Hotbox. I even went so far as designing a Flash website where the user interface was a riff on that. I'm going to have to check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q06HN5dXzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q06HN5dXzI

fragmede 2y ago
Fusion 360 also features pie menus for certain functions. quite handy and I wish more places used them. especially the homescreen on my phone - just go home then put a finger down then go up then right to open whatever preconfigured app is there.
layer8 2y ago
That looks more usable than pie menus to me. Somehow I‘m an orthogonal-grid person and perceive radial movements as too finicky to perform accurately.
- thr33 2y ago
  this approach is definitely more usable. radial menus only make ergonomic sense on ie game controllers. with a mouse it becomes a high precision action to use, plus poor accessibility because it doesnt conform to the standard box model.
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NaOH 2y ago

I can't try this because my OS version is too old. I'm confident the app marketing, specifically the idea "Your favorite shortcuts at your mousetip!," is appropriate for how most would use it, though my case would be different. My first thought was how this would be helpful for the app commands I use just enough to want quickly accessible but not often enough that I remember the keyboard shortcuts. I'll give this a try when my Mac/OS are compatible. Best of luck.

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ljm 2y ago

Reminds me a bit of the Surface Dial. Really liked that concept even if I’d never have the sort of setup that would benefit from it.

j45 2y ago
I was thinking about that too. I think logitech or someone else has a device or software too?
- seltzered_ 2y ago
  Griffin had the PowerMate going back to 2001: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin_PowerMate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin_PowerMate
- vasac 2y ago
  Logitech mouse driver had something similar — the middle button (which was configurable) used to show a 3x3 grid of icons that you could click or simply release the mouse button over. This allowed you to easily close or minimize windows (I never used anything else, so I don't remember what other functions it had). However, a few years later, they removed it from the driver, and Windows 7 couldn't use the older driver. So, I made a AutoHotkey script that displayed the same grid as a plain jpeg and then activated some action depending on the mouse coordinates within that image.

k__ 2y ago

Don't quite understand why not more mobile apps have a radial menu. Seems like a reasonable choice for one-thumb controls.

j45 2y ago
Agree, it's very handy and natural .. also existed in many forms. The lack of seeing this may be an patent issue where a patent for a radial menu needs to be invalidated. Pie menus existed back in the 60's, before the patents, lots of examples in this thread. And for what it's wroth, I'm glad this thing exists, because people should be able to see it and say 'oh yeah, this is like the buttons on my remote control"
ks2048 2y ago
I'd guess one issue is the number of items. Radial probably only works for 6 or less. With a scrollable list, any number would work (And many popups have a variable number of options).
jandrese 2y ago
One downside is your thumb is always going to obscure at least one of the options.
- viraptor 2y ago
  You don't need to make it a full circle. Fan menus are also good. https://cuppalabs.github.io/angular-fan-menu/ https://cuppalabs.github.io/angular-fan-menu/
  - jandrese 2y ago
    This assumes the phone knows what angle your finger is coming in from. Even if you assume it is coming in from the bottom half that introduces problems when the hit point is near the top of the screen.
    - viraptor 2y ago

tinkertell 2y ago

Personally I‘m using BetterTouchTool‘s floating menus for this. These are very powerful because they are fully scriptable and can be triggered in many different ways (although the docs are still very basic, most useful info is on their community forum). Here is a nice window management preset I have been using for some time now: https://community.folivora.ai/t/mouse-window-menu-mwm-window-management-via-floating-menu/33055 https://community.folivora.ai/t/mouse-window-menu-mwm-window...

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josters 2y ago
This preset is great and gets really natural quite quickly. Just hold down the right mouse button and wait for the menu to appear, then release it at the desired option. I have adapted the window management menu to commands specific to whatever app I am using as well as global ones.
- swah 2y ago
  I was going to say that - this interaction would work better starting from the mouse itself. Can always use Steermouse mapped to a shortcut though..

donatj 2y ago

I used to use a similar app where you'd spin your mouse in a circle and it'd pop open a radial menu in the center of the circle you drew. It was kinda neat, I forget the name of it.

lagniappe 2y ago

This just makes sense

idle_zealot 2y ago

[flagged]

nerdjon 2y ago

It looks cool, this is not a critique of your work just something I have noticed about myself and curious if others have. I don't know why but I have long struggled with using icons to mark a task. There are certain ones that are so engrained like a floppy disk to save, a plus mark for a new tab, reload symbol, home symbol, or other very obvious ones. Or ones that are just the logo for a brand, those are easy to remember. But especially as we moved away from skeuomorphism (which thankfully bits and pieces of it are combing back, without it being bashed over the head with, like with the apple pencil UI) this got a lot harder for me. And I see this, and and I just know that I am going to have to look at all 6 going in a circle to find the one I want every time. I experienced this recently where I wanted to put a Shortcut (from the Mac App) on my toolbar in finder. My only option is to show icon only, text only, or both. I can't say, I want to have both for some things. I am curious if anyone else has struggle with symbols. Basically it seems like for me, the only symbols I remember are the ones that are so obvious (I guess) that it couldn't possible be something else. Or its universal across most/all apps. Even apps that I use daily, if its a symbol unique to that app I am still going to go top to bottom or left to right mousing over until I find the one I am looking for.

ppbjj 2y ago
Similar thoughts. I use a few of the apps listed on the site frequently and this would take me awhile to master. Super cool idea though.
KaiMagnus 2y ago
No, you're most certainly not alone. Very few icons are intuitively understandable, although even the folks at Nielsen Norman have trouble backing that up with data (as linked below). What immediately came to my mind was Autodesk Maya, where they have similar menus that use text only labels (see the screenshot from their manual). They have a lot of very abstract and complicated features, so every bit of usability counts. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-8BA1A3AA-4C44-4779-8B22-0AAE3627E8EB https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-8B...
jandrese 2y ago

kaeruct 2y ago

I liked the preview feature on the website, but shift + z is a horrible shortcut on a German keyboard. Just thought I'd let you know.

hauken 2y ago
Thanks! I’ve had a lot of doubts with the preview feature. Browsers won’t let you reliably use cmd/option for the same effect to preview it, so landed on shift + z. But in the app you can’t use that shortcut because it would trigger every time you write something with capital Z.

herpdyderp 2y ago

What’s the free tier like? I see no explanation of that but it’s free with in-app “unlimited access” purchases.

hauken 2y ago
Free tier is 10 shortcut invocations a day before it resets next day. You could also try a 7 day free trial if you pick the yearly subscription (you can then directly cancel in App store and not pay) Here is more on the pricing: https://www.pie-menu.com/help/pricing https://www.pie-menu.com/help/pricing But as you say I haven’t written about the free tier there.

gwbas1c 2y ago

Uhm, isn't this what command (right) click is supposed to do?

hammerbrostime 2y ago

Hi, I had some initial trouble where I kept selecting all the text on the website when I shift-z-clicked. This is easily fixed by making text unselectable on your site via CSS. I wouldn't recommend everyone use it for their entire site, but I think in your case it will make a better demo. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/826782/how-to-disable-text-selection-highlighting https://stackoverflow.com/questions/826782/how-to-disable-te...

hauken 2y ago
Thanks! I haven’t noticed that problem! Will try it out!
- geon 2y ago
  Add the style only while the menu is up. I had to do something similar a while ago to implement drag&drop while keeping text selectable.

iAkashPaul 2y ago

Hey Marius, cool project! Would this work with just the middle mouse button click too?

hauken 2y ago
Yes, as long as you can trigger a keyboard shortcut from the middle mouse click. With help of better touch tool or others you can also trigger it with three finger tap on your trackpad: https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options

ericyd 2y ago

Just a heads up, the marketing site has really bad scroll performance on Android Firefox.

hauken 2y ago
Thanks! I should test it more thoroughly. Wrapping a couple of the blurs and masks in @supports will probably quickly fix a couple of the issues.
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ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

That's nice! I wrote a Swift package that does a similar thing (but as an iOS widget): https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner My own experience, is that I keep on not using it in my projects. It's too much of an "in your face" widget. I was going to do a SwiftUI version of it, but stopped working on it, when I figured out that I probably wouldn't use it. I suspect that MacOS, with the cursor-oriented navigation, is a better home for it.

hauken 2y ago
Nice! I’ve noticed that I tend to use Pie Menu myself on apps where I frequently switch tools. Like Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator etc. Or for apps that have different modes: like Calendar (today, week, month), Things (today, inbox++), Obsidian (daily note, graph view, backlinks). For other apps where the keyboard shortcuts acts more as other shortcuts I don’t use it as much.
- wyclif 2y ago
  This is nice, but one thing I immediately noticed that I think would improve the landing page is to make the shift and "z" keys look like Apple keyboard keys. EDIT: I know a lot of Mac users have HHKBs or whatever, so they are not actually pressing Apple keys, but I think it would make the page seem more Apple-oriented.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Pie menus work quite well for selecting tools, as an alternative to the tool palette. Here are pie menus in SimCity for X11 (from around 1992): X11 SimCity Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA Here's a demo of a more recent version for Flash from around 2009, which demonstrates how the pie menus serve as a much quicker alternative to the tool palette: Micropolis Online (SimCity) Web Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE And of course The Sims 1 uses pie menus too. The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs

rendx 2y ago

Nice idea! On German keyboards, Z and Y are swapped, so holding SHIFT-Z is not very convenient. You may want to allow both for your demo.

hauken 2y ago
The things you learn! Good idea: easy fix to allow both on the website.

worldmerge 2y ago

Nice job on the website! That’s sick!

bitwize 2y ago

Did you know that Hackernews' own DonHopkins implemented pie menus for his X11 port of SimCity?

dylan604 2y ago

This is one of those things that is interesting but I don't immediately dis-like it like so many other ideas looking for a problem to solve. Being that it is so new, the one thing that strikes me immediately is the use of icons instead of text. I get that it looks good design-wise, but now my mind has to remember the icons. Some of the actions are short words where text could be used and not be cluttered: Move, Copy, Scale, etc. Maybe as an option? Also, would it be possible to have a different trigger than keyboard keys? If I'm hitting keyboard modifier to enable this, I'll just hit the shortcut keys directly. What about middle-click (3-finger click on macOS multi-touch or something) equivalent to enable so that it is entirely mouse driven?

Terretta 2y ago
> Being that it is so new, the one thing that strikes me immediately is the use of icons instead of text. That's so you don't confuse it with a right-click pop-up menu. :-)
- dylan604 2y ago
  I think the round ring surrounding the cursor is taking care of that in and of itself.
thr33 2y ago
using text would lay bare the silliness of the radial menu pattern - it either wouldnt fit neatly into the circular containers or, if conformed to the curvature of the radial menu, would be unreadable/low accessibility
- dylan604 2y ago
  i strongly disagree: https://imgur.com/a/oi5Rxz1 https://imgur.com/a/oi5Rxz1
  - eviks 2y ago
    You disagree that search mirrored is poorly readable?

BiteCode_dev 2y ago

Always liked the Secret of Mana circular menu, but could never find a really good way of porting that to a computer.

kayson 2y ago
The menu sounds haunt my nightmares
- vanderZwan 2y ago
  Hahaha, if you cast a ton of spells it does get a little "menu spammy" near the end, doesn't it? :D

numbers 2y ago

Love it! installed thru SetApp :)

o-o- 2y ago

Nice work – radial menus are so underrated. A feature request is to allow the menu to ride along the cursor trajectory, effectively evolving the menu into a gesture GUI. I made an attempt at an svg implementation eight years ago: https://rawgit.com/lgrkvst/d3-sunburst-menu/master/demo/d3-sunburst-demo.html https://rawgit.com/lgrkvst/d3-sunburst-menu/master/demo/d3-s...

Terretta 2y ago
Someone showed one of these here a few months ago, with a sequence of gestures diving deeper into a menu tree. The idea started out great but hit a wall every time you tried to gesture near an edge. It also felt as though you were playing Witcher 3 casting spells...
benatkin 2y ago
I think they might be accurately rated. If they were underrated perhaps they would have flourished after iPhone/Android came out (more for the coolness factor than the utility factor, since on mobile they have the issue of something being blocked by your finger, which I think limits it but isn't a dealbreaker). However, donut chart menus haven't been catching on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966 I think they're cool, and that's about it, that the Fitts's Law benefit is too small (as argued in the thread I linked), and that the coolness factor fades fairly quickly for most (though I still want some sometimes). Edit: if it's straightforward to port https://github.com/kando-menu/kando https://github.com/kando-menu/kando from electron to Tauri that might be interesting. https://github.com/kando-menu/kando/issues/410 https://github.com/kando-menu/kando/issues/410
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  We performed a controlled empirical comparison of pie vs linear menus in 1988, which we presented at CHI'88 and published in the proceedings. It showed that pie menus were 15% faster than linear menus, and that they had a significantly lower error rate. An Empirical Comparison of Pie vs. Linear Menus. Presented at ACM CHI’88 Conference, Washington DC, 1988. https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie-vs-linear-menus-466c6fdbba4b https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie... [...] Conclusions What does this mean? Should we program pie menus into our bitmapped window systems tomorrow and expect a 15–20% increase in productivity since users can select items slightly faster with pie menus. Pie menus seem promising, but more experiments are needed before issuing a strong recommendation. First, this experiment only addresses fixed length menus, in particular, menus consisting of 8 items — no more, no less. Secondly, there remains the problem of increased screen real estate usage, In one trial a subject complained because the pie menu obscured his view of the target prompt message. Finally, the questionnaire showed that the subjects were almost evenly divided between pie and linear menus in subjective satisfaction. Many found it difficult to “home in on” a particular item because of the unusual activation region characteristics of the pie menu. One assumption of this study concerns the use of a mouse/cursor control device and the use of pop-up style menus (as opposed to menus invoked from a fixed screen location or permanent menus). Certainly, pie menus can and in fact have been incorporated to use keyed input [7] and fixed “pull-down” style presentation (the pie menu becomes a semicircle menu). These variations are areas for further research.

geon 2y ago

The demo on the website is very cute and a bit unexpected.

Terretta 2y ago

Where this is most helpful is: Vision Pro. After all, this UI and "gesture" is how you calibrate it ...

atum47 2y ago

I've made one these for the web a few years ago https://github.com/victorqribeiro/radialMenu https://github.com/victorqribeiro/radialMenu I was going to rewrite it using it SVG instead of canvas but never came around to it

hauken 2y ago
Nice! That would have probably saved me a lot of time when implementing on the website instead of trial and error. Current version on the website is however only done with CSS (and React).

tambourine_man 2y ago

Scrolling the website is painful in Safari latest

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vegasje 2y ago

Have you considered displaying the text representation of the currently-hovered menu item inside the center of the circle? Or if the text wouldn't fit, then above/below the circle?

hauken 2y ago
It already shows the text of the currently-hovered menu item inside the center of the circle. See examples here: https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options https://www.pie-menu.com/help/show-options

inopinatus 2y ago

Add DualShock/DualSense bindings and I'm sold.

ji_zai 2y ago

This is so creative and super useful!

bluSCALE4 2y ago

Interesting app. Going to give it a spin. I like the 10 use model demo. FYI, for a moment, I thought it was a sub only app and was upset. Glad you have a fixed price option. Is lifetime in air quotes or will it really be lifetime?

hauken 2y ago
My intention is lifetime without air quotes

grishka 2y ago

A bug report: the demo on the website doesn't work when you have a non-Latin (e.g. Cyrillic) keyboard layout active.

hauken 2y ago
Thanks. Didn't think of that. Do you have a suggestion of what character I could use for Cyrillic keyboard layout or others?
- grishka 2y ago
  Ideally, you shouldn't rely on characters for this, you should instead use the key code (which is 90 for z/я), which identifies the physical key on the keyboard as opposed to its corresponding character in the current layout. Here's a useful tool for finding out key codes: https://www.toptal.com/developers/keycode https://www.toptal.com/developers/keycode

titchard 2y ago

I really like the idea, but as a left handed person I found it needed to have a keyboard shortcut accessible from the right hand (maybe this can be an option in the menu?)

hauken 2y ago
In the onboarding you can set your own preferred keyboard shortcut.
oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
I find the whole concept of it requiring a keyboard shortcut to activate a bit strange — that will, typically, require me to move my hand from the mouse to the keyboard and back again. I'm surprised there isn't gesture support.

thiht 2y ago

Are there plans to make Pie Menu available on Homebrew? I don't install anything from the App Store on mac.

hauken 2y ago
No. Not at the moment. We're currently only available in the App Store or in Setapp. Though you could install it via: $ brew install mas $ mas install 1631568126

swah 2y ago

Similar to https://charmstone.app/ https://charmstone.app/ but I really enjoy your "contextual" config. I wish it was dynamic somehow, though..

hauken 2y ago
Could you elaborate what you mean by dynamic?
- swah 2y ago
  That the options were populated smartly, with menu information / AI etc :) Removing the unwanted ones is easy :)

neilv 2y ago

I thought "pie menu" was the generic term, going back a few decades. Not a brand name implementation of a generic term "radial menu" like the headline suggests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu

markatkinson 2y ago

Lovely website and what looks like a lovely app. Will download and give it a try!

yborg 2y ago

So for Adobe apps, for which this would be very useful, they install by default as Adobe <appname> <year>, i.e. "Adobe Photoshop 2023". I have several revisions installed for most of them for various reasons. When I attempt to add a shortcut from pie-menu.com, it tells me "Application adobe photoshop is not installed on your computer" :(

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hauken 2y ago
Yes. We’re having some issues with Adobe apps on some Macs. We hope to have a fix out for that soon!
DonHopkins 2y ago
I've petitioned Adobe to support pie menus in their products, but it's fallen on deaf ears. Here's a 12-year-old thread about “Crowd funding project: Marking menus for Photoshop and other software” that I recently ran across, and wrote a reply to, providing more information and links, and correcting some old misinformation. https://polycount.com/discussion/96932/crowd-funding-project-marking-menus-for-photoshop-and-other-software https://polycount.com/discussion/96932/crowd-funding-project... Crowd funding project: Marking menus for Photoshop and other software vertigo__ polycounter lvl 11 Offline / Send Messagevertigo__ polycounter lvl 11 Mar 2012 Recently I was telling a buddy of mine about how I hate digging through the standard menus in some software like Photoshop. In Maya or Zbrush I am used to creating either marking menus or custom palettes that allow me to assign multiple related commands to one hotkey. This is useful for organization and also more efficient than having one command assigned to one hotkey. He mentioned that he made an attempt to address this for Illustrator and wanted to expand the Idea to work with any software. He wants to generate $1000 to hire a programmer to help with the stuff that is outside his scope of knowledge. I figured there are probably others out there like us and I might find some like minded people here. Here is his pitch: http://www.indiegogo.com/unipie http://www.indiegogo.com/unipie Maybe people would like to pitch in ideas or gui designs too?

fireant 2y ago

I've been using radial menu from Charmstone to switch apps on macos for about half a year and it's a really great paradign. Never could memorize too many shortcuts for switching apps but this is just as fast. I wish there was a high quality app for windows that did this.