If you’ve ever used the (frankly awesome) desktop e-mail app Geary, its maintainer has a question for you.

He’s launched a poll asking for your feedback on whether the app should switch to instant search and away from the single-keystroke commands it currently uses.

Not sure what either of those are? I’ll explain.

Instant Search is enabled in a raft of GNOME apps, including Nautilus. With the app in focus you can start hammering away on your keyboard to perform a search, no need to click the ‘magnifying glass’ search icon first,

Single-keystroke commands are even speedier shortcuts as they let you do things inside an app just by typing a single letter; i.e., without having to hold down the Ctrl key as well.

So, for example, in the latest stable builds of Geary you can press n to open the compose window, s to star a selected message(s), r to reply, and so on.

Both are, as Geary’s maintainer admits, “quite useful” — but naturally you can’t have both. Well, not unless you never intend to search for mails beginning with s , n , r , etc!

If Geary were to use one of these methods which would you rather it be: instant search or single-keystroke commands?

You can let Geary’s developers know by taking the following (very short) survey (you don’t even need to affix a stamp):

Geary Poll: Instant Search vs Single-Keystroke Commands

The results of the survey are not intended to be binding, but will undoubtedly help Geary’s developers seal their, er, envelope… deal… I can’t think of a decent letter-related pun to end on…