Spotlight, Siri & Shortcuts
The official SpotAsk release registers app actions that macOS can expose to Spotlight, Siri, and Shortcuts. It also registers the spotask:// URL scheme for Alfred, Raycast, terminal scripts, and Shortcuts.
Opens the Shortcuts page in SpotAsk. If SpotAsk is not installed this link does nothing — open it by hand instead: SpotAsk menu bar icon → Settings... → Shortcuts, or press ⌘ + , to open Settings. Direct link: spotask://settings/shortcuts
Available actions
- Open SpotAsk opens the question window.
- Ask AI asks a question.
- Translate, Explain, Summarize, and Polish run the matching built-in prompt on content you provide.
- New Conversation clears the current conversation and opens SpotAsk.
Spotlight
Search for SpotAsk in Spotlight and choose an action such as Ask SpotAsk a question, then enter your content or question.
Siri
Ask Siri to use a SpotAsk action, for example "Ask SpotAsk to translate [text]".
Shortcuts
Open the Shortcuts app and search for SpotAsk actions. Add an action with its required content, or build a larger shortcut that passes text, a question, or another shortcut's output to SpotAsk.
URL scheme
Open these links from another app, a shortcut, or Terminal. Spaces and other special characters in a question must be percent-encoded.
| URL | What it does |
|---|---|
spotask://open | Opens the question window |
spotask://ask?q=Your%20question | Fills in the question and sends it |
spotask://ask?q=Your%20question&submit=false | Fills in the question without sending |
spotask://toggle | Shows or hides the question window |
spotask://settings | Opens Settings |
spotask://settings/<page> | Opens one Settings page |
<page> is a stable ASCII id, never a localized interface title:
| Page id | Settings page |
|---|---|
provider | Service |
prompts | Prompts |
external-ask | External Ask |
selection-assistant | Selection Assistant |
shortcuts | Shortcuts |
general | General |
appearance | Appearance |
about | About |
Ids are case-insensitive. A missing or unknown id, an extra path segment, or a fragment falls back to plain Settings instead of failing.
From Terminal:
open "spotask://ask?q=What%20is%20Swift%20concurrency"If SpotAsk is not running, the URL launches it and then runs the command. If it is already in the menu bar, the command runs immediately.
Custom builds
System integrations work in the official release. If you build SpotAsk yourself, the app must be signed with an Apple development team, and you should run it once from Xcode before using its actions in Shortcuts. Personal Team builds are for personal use and may need to be rebuilt periodically.
Related: Prompts, Getting Started