Run AI actions on text selected in any Windows application

One shortcut for every action

Select text in any app and press Ctrl+Shift+Q. Selection actions opens beside your selection: a small searchable menu of every built-in and custom action, named after the app the text came from. Actions that have a shortcut of their own show it, and the ones without a shortcut are there too.

Selection actions, over Notepad++

Choose an action

Up and Down move through the list, and Enter or a click runs the one you want.

Type to filter

The list narrows to the actions whose names match what you type.

Ask your own question

Whatever you type also appears as an Ask: … row. Choose it to send your question about the selection.

Keep the text instead

Save as Active Note keeps the selection as a note on your PC, and sends nothing.

Close it

Esc, a click elsewhere or the shortcut again closes the menu without sending anything.

Selection actions

The menu's shortcut can be changed or cleared under Settings › Actions & prompts. Like every global shortcut, it takes precedence over the same keys inside other apps while SideNote Pro runs.

Answers in a compact popup

An action that sends at once, such as Summarize or Rewrite, and a question you typed into the menu, answer in a small window where the menu was. SideNote Pro's main window stays as it was, so you keep your place in the app you are working in.

Copy

Copies the answer with its formatting; Copy as Markdown, beside it, copies it exactly as written.

Stop

Ends an answer that is still being written, and keeps the part already written.

Open in SideNote

Brings up the main window at the same conversation and answer. An answer still being written carries on there, and nothing is sent again.

Return to the app

Puts a finished answer back into the editor, as described below.

Actions that open the main window

Ask SideNote, and custom actions set to let you review the request first, open the main window instead, with the selection in the message box ready for your question. Every answer, in the popup or the main window, is saved in a new conversation in your history, like any other.

Put the answer back where it came from

Once an answer to selected text is complete, *Return to app* offers Replace selection and Insert after. It appears in the popup and under the answer in the main window, named after the app the text came from, such as Return to Notepad**.

Replace selection

Replaces only the text you selected.

Insert after

Keeps your selection and adds the answer straight after it.

Nothing goes back without a click

Nothing is replaced when an answer finishes, and an answer only ever goes to the editor the selection came from, never to whichever app happens to be in front.

Your clipboard comes back

SideNote Pro pastes through the editor's own paste, checks the result, and then puts back what you had copied. Its own clipboard writes stay out of Windows clipboard history and cloud clipboard.

One return per selection

A return is used up by its paste. To put another answer back, select the text and run an action again.

When only Copy is offered

SideNote Pro returns an answer only when it can confirm that the selection is still exactly where you left it. If you changed the text or the selection, closed the document, or waited more than 30 minutes, the answer offers Copy instead and says why. The same applies in password fields, read-only text, apps running as administrator, and editors that do not let Windows report their selection. Notepad, Microsoft Word and text boxes in Google Chrome support it; in other editors, the answer may offer only Copy.

If SideNote Pro sends the paste but cannot confirm the result, it says so and asks you to check the document. It does not undo anything for you, because the editor's undo history may hold edits of your own.

Five built-in actions

Every action is in the Selection actions menu. An action can also keep a global shortcut of its own, set in Settings › Actions & prompts, which runs it directly without the menu: the built-ins ship with Ctrl+Shift+A, S, R, E and T. Ask SideNote is the one that pauses for input, which makes it the right choice for anything where the question changes each time.

Settings › Actions & prompts

Custom actions

The built-in five cover common cases, and you can define your own. A custom action specifies four things:

• An instruction. The prompt applied to the selection.
• An optional shortcut. Its own global key combination. With or without one, the action is in the Selection actions menu.
• Where `{{selection}}` goes. The placeholder marks the position of the captured text inside your instruction, so context can sit before it, after it, or both.
• Send behaviour. Fire immediately, or prepare the request in the composer so you can review or add to it before sending.

Examples worth building: Convert this into acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then form: {{selection}}, or Explain this error to someone unfamiliar with this codebase, then list the three most likely causes: {{selection}}, or Rewrite this for a non-technical stakeholder, keeping it under 120 words: {{selection}}.

Settings › Actions & prompts › Custom actions

What this looks like in practice

• A writer selects a clumsy paragraph in Word, presses Ctrl+Shift+Q, chooses Rewrite, and puts the better version in its place with Replace selection.
• A product manager selects a paragraph of requirements in a specification and chooses Explain, to see what an outside reader would take from it.
• A developer selects a stack trace in a terminal, types the one detail the trace does not contain into the menu, and chooses the Ask row.
• Anyone selects a paragraph of a foreign-language email and chooses Translate, without opening a translation site.
• An analyst clicks into Excel's formula bar, selects a formula someone else wrote, and chooses Explain. Using it beside Excel covers what a cell selection sends, and what it does not.

The common thread is that the source application never loses focus for longer than the round trip. See AI actions on selected text for the full walkthrough.

Selected-text actions work on text that already exists. For text you are still writing, inline commands do the job from inside the field: type a trigger such as /fix before the text, press Tab, and the result replaces it in place. For a message you are writing in your own language, /en translates it to English in the same field.

How capture works, and its limits

Text capture happens only when you press the Selection actions shortcut or an action's own shortcut. SideNote Pro does not read the clipboard in the background and does not poll for selections.

When you press one, SideNote Pro identifies the window in front, keeps a copy of your clipboard, asks that app to copy the selection, and checks that the new clipboard content came from that app before using it. It then puts your previous clipboard back, so using an action does not cost you whatever you had copied. SideNote Pro keeps its own clipboard writes out of Windows clipboard history and cloud clipboard; the app's own copy follows your Windows clipboard settings, as any copy does.

So that an answer can go back later, SideNote Pro also reads the selection, and up to 64 characters on each side of it, through Windows UI Automation. It compares them in memory to confirm the selection, and never saves, logs or sends them.