[Ocean572]

Closes #148.

Problem

Users requested keyboard shortcuts to copy the selected search result's file path as plain text, making it possible to paste the path directly into an open or upload dialog.

The existing copy behavior did not support this workflow:

• Ctrl+C copies the actual file, allowing it to be pasted into a file manager, chat, or email. It does not populate the filename field in an open/upload dialog.
• The window's existing "Copy Path" menu item used navigator.clipboard, which requires clipboard permissions that the shell's Tauri capability configuration does not provide. Consequently, it did not work on Linux or Windows.
• The search panel had no path-copy functionality at all.

Changes

1. Windows and Linux Shell

A shared copyPathText implementation in results.js adds two keyboard shortcuts for focused search results:

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+Shift+C	Copy absolute file path
Ctrl+Shift+R	Copy path relative to its search folder

Both the search panel and the main window support these shortcuts.

The main window's right-click context menu also gains a Copy Relative Path option alongside the existing Copy Path action.

2. Relative Path Resolution

Relative path generation is handled by a new Rust helper, relative_path, exposed to the frontend through relative_path_text.

The helper applies the following rules:

• Uses the longest containing search folder when multiple search folders contain the file.
• Displays / as the path separator.
• Compares folder paths case-insensitively to match Windows path behavior.
• Falls back to the absolute path when no configured search folder contains the file.

This ensures nested search folders resolve against the most specific matching root.

3. Native System Clipboard Integration

A new Tauri command, copy_text, handles copying path strings to the system clipboard.

Platform-specific implementations use:

• Windows: CF_UNICODETEXT.
• Linux: GTK clipboard text.

This uses the same native clipboard mechanism already used by the application's existing file-copy functionality.

Why Not navigator.clipboard?

The initial implementation used navigator.clipboard.writeText, but pre-push code review identified a platform compatibility problem.

Tauri serves its frontend through a custom URL scheme. On Windows, this uses http://tauri.localhost, which is not considered a secure context for the browser clipboard API.

Consequently, the web clipboard API is unavailable in this environment.

The native clipboard implementation avoids this limitation and does not require:

• Additional Tauri capabilities or clipboard permissions.
• A clipboard plugin.
• A secure browser origin.

It also uses the same underlying native clipboard approach that the application already relies on.

4. Panel State and Selection Handling

Pre-push review also identified a regression in the original implementation.

The panel's state object did not include an info property. As a result, its first panel-shown event attempted to access missing state, causing an exception and preventing the search field from receiving focus.

This is fixed by:

• Initializing folder information through state.info.folders.
• Refreshing the folder information whenever the panel is shown.

The keyboard shortcuts also preserve normal text-selection behavior.

If text is selected in the search query field or elsewhere on the page, the shortcut is allowed to perform its normal copy-selection action instead of copying the selected file path.

This is particularly important for Ctrl+Shift+C, which WebKitGTK uses as a text-selection copy shortcut.

5. macOS Support

The macOS application receives equivalent functionality in the search panel:

Shortcut	Action
⌘⇧C	Copy absolute file path
⌘⇧R	Copy relative file path

Additional UI changes include:

• Panel keyboard hints now display ⌘⇧C Path.
• Search result context menus gain Copy Relative Path.
• Relative paths are only offered when the relevant search folders are available.

The panel now passes its folder configuration through to the result rows.

The main window's rows do not currently receive that folder information, so the relative-path option is intentionally omitted there. This avoids presenting a relative-path action that would simply return the absolute path.

6. Shared macOS Relative Path Logic

Both keyboard shortcuts and context menu actions use a shared implementation:

FileDragView.relativeSpelling

Its behavior matches the shell's Rust relative_path implementation:

• Trims trailing path separators, including multiple trailing separators.
• Treats / as a root that contains every absolute path.
• Uses the longest matching search folder when resolving nested roots.

This keeps relative-path generation consistent across the macOS and Windows/Linux implementations.

Testing and Verification

Measured on the development machine:

Hardware and environment: Apple M1, 8 GB RAM, macOS 26.5.1.

Rust Tests

• cargo test: 14 tests passed.
• New copy_path_tests cover:
  • Windows-style backslash paths.
  • Nested search folders and longest-folder matching.
  • Case-insensitive root matching.
  • Absolute-path fallback when no root contains the file.
  • Root-itself fallback behavior.
  • / as a root containing all absolute paths.
  • Longest-folder matching taking precedence over /.
  • Roots with one or multiple trailing separators.

Additional Test Suites

• Swift test suite: 125 tests passed.
• Shell JavaScript tests: node --test — 17 tests passed.
• All frontend pages passed node --check.

Scope and Limitations

The following items remain unverified or have known platform-specific limitations:

• Live Tauri clipboard verification: Clipboard writes have not been verified inside a running Tauri webview. The shell application does not run on macOS, and the Windows-specific copy_text implementation is only compiled for Windows targets.
• macOS GUI acceptance: The new macOS panel keyboard shortcuts and context menu behavior have not been exercised through GUI testing on this development machine.
• Windows WebView2 shortcut handling: Ctrl+Shift+C may be intercepted by the browser control for its own copy functionality. The text-selection guard handles the common case. Ctrl+Shift+R does not have the same shortcut conflict.
• Linux filenames containing literal backslashes: A filename containing a literal \ character will have its separators rewritten during relative-path formatting. This behavior exists in both implementations and is expected to be extremely uncommon.
• Non-ASCII case sensitivity: The shell compares folder names using ASCII case-insensitive matching, consistent with Windows path behavior. The macOS implementation performs case-insensitive matching across the full alphabet. This creates a minor divergence for non-ASCII folder names.
• Window folder-state freshness: The main window loads its folder configuration when the window opens, whereas the search panel refreshes its folders every time it is shown. If folders change while the main window remains open, relative paths may be calculated using the older folder list until the window is reloaded.