Superlinks are custom-made shortcuts to other applications and websites. You can create a Superlink by searching “Create Superlink” in Monarch.

Imagine shortcuts, bookmarks, and an app switcher combined into a single feature. Having even just two Superlinks setup will change how you use your Mac to a significant degree.

Running the “All Superlinks” command will show you all of the Superlinks you have created and allow you to search them. Additionally, you can see which Superlinks you’ve used the most and which ones you have used the least at a glance.

To delete a Superlink, press CTRL+Delete.

Run the “Create Superlink” command to begin creating a new Superlink which will become immediately available in root search once it has been created.

Creating a Superlink is as flexible as it is easy. You simply write a URL into the input labeled Link. For example:

https://github.com

This will allow you to access Github from Monarch any time you need it.

Of course, you can extend Superlink functionality a great deal further by using parameters and optionals. To do that, change the link to:

https://github.com/{user}

We can now supply a Github username to Monarch and find different user profiles this way! So to access various Github profiles, I can now type in Monarch “github” and then “rmdashrfv” and open my own profile with ease!

One Superlink I’ve found incredibly useful is this one:

https://github.com/{user:rmdashrfv}/{repo?}

This demonstrates two powerful features of Superlinks: default values and optionals. By using the colon character, we can supply a value for user that Monarch will use in the event we don’t type anything. In this case, I want to always fallback to my own profile. Perhaps you want to use your work organization’s Github account here.

Next, I have repo as an optional (by ending it with a question mark). This means that if I simply leave the repo parameter empty, it will omit that parameter entirely.

With this setup you can easily search both Github profiles and specific repos from the same command!

To edit a Superlink you use CMD+E (same as editing an emoji in the Emoji Picker).

  • Add custom icons. Sometimes you have different purposes for similar Commands. Setting different icons will help to better distinguish between your favorite Superlinks and everything else.

  • Use a regular website with a static Superlink. (e.g. github.com). This effectively works like bookmarking a website in Monarch.

  • Create dynamic Superlinks with parameters. Anything between the curly brackets will be defined as a parameter with the name of the parameter being whatever is typed inside. For example, to create a parameter called “ticket ID”, you would type: {ticket ID} anywhere in the link.

  • Create Superlinks to your applications. For example if you want to open a url in a specific browser all of the time, regardless of your default browser, you can set a Superlink to open in Arc, by choosing it from the dropdown next to “Open With”.

  • Add parameters to your Superlinks by using bracket notation. Anything in the brackets will be treated as a parameter that you can use in your Superlinks by tabbing into them as soon as they appear in the UI. Example: https://google.com/search?q={Query}

  • Add default values to Superlink parameters by using : in the parameter. For example, by using https://github.com/{user:rmdashrfv} I can choose to search for another user account on Github, or if I am trying to open my own profile, I can simply leave the user parameter blank.

  • Add optional Superlink parameters by ending a Superlink parameter with a ?. Now when you leave this parameter empty, it Monarch will omit it entirely.

  • Automatically trigger Superlink parameters For example, I have a Superlink called “Search npm” that allows me to quickly search NodeJS packages on npm. I made it so that I simply type “npm” to automatically trigger the search parameter. To see why this is useful, read “Using Auto Triggers” below.

  • Reorder Superlink parameters by starting the parameter with the number 1, 2, or 3 within square brackets to denote its position. For example: {[1]language} will make the language parameter show up first even if the language parameter is last in the actual URL. See more info below.

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Why reordering parameters is useful

Sometimes you have a Superlink based on a URL and that URL is structured such that the parameters you use most often go at the end of the URL.

While you can set default parameters for this, you would still have to press the Tab key to skip over these parameters. After a while, it’s obvious that you’re just wasting keypresses.

By utilizing the reordering feature of Superlinks, you can access the parts of the URL you need most often and Monarch will know how to correctly structure the URL once it is activated.

Here’s an example:

https://www.deepl.com/translator#{[3]source:en}/{[2]target:es}/{[1]phrase?}

When using DeepL for translation, the text you want to translate is meant to go at the end in “phrase”. This means that we would have to press Tab twice every time we want to translate something.

Instead of searching for the DeepL Superlink in Monarch and then remembering to press Tab twice every single time, we can simply make it so that the “phrase” parameter is always the first one, and set default options for the remaning parameters.

Now we can use DeepL to quickly translate text to Spanish, and if need be, change to another laguage with Tab and also if the need arises, we can change the source language at the end. Perfect!

In this sense, it feels as if Monarch gives you control over the DeepL API, making it that much easier to use.

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Using Auto Triggers

Auto Triggers are a very useful feature you can enable that causes your typing to automatically flow into the parameters of your Superlinks. This is very handy for when you know exactly what you’re looking for and you want to get there through muscle memory!

Auto Triggers tend to be most useful when they are a shortened part of the name of the Superlink (but they don’t have to be at all, you can make them whatever you want).

For a better user experience, I recommend making your Auto Triggers at least 2 characters long, but keep in mind that they are case-sensitive, so if you ended up needing the key later, you can always capitalize or lowercase it.

Match Check is a way to manage your open tabs and prevent Monarch from opening new tabs for websites and web apps that you already have open. This effectively turns websites into apps that can be switched to just like any other installed app.

Fallback Link this is the URL that Monarch will activate whenever you use a Superlink while leaving all of the parameters empty. This is different from optional parameters because it allows you to use any URL including an entirely different domain as a fallback.

Use Monarch is for web-based Superlinks that normally open within a browser. Sometimes you create Superlinks to quickly glance at data or info and you don’t want to be taken out of your workflow and moved to a browser. For this, check the Use Monarch feature and your Superlink will open directly within Monarch.

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