Quick compose (⌥⌘C)

A system-wide chord opens a compose window from whatever application the user happens to be in. Magimail registers it at launch, and the Quick compose hotkey picker in Preferences → General chooses it: Off, ⌥⌘C (the default), ⌃⌘C, ⇧⌘C, ⌃⌥⌘C. Every chord is C, for compose, and only the modifiers vary: the three two-modifier ⌘ combinations cover an ordinary collision, and ⌃⌥⌘C is for when all three are taken. macOS ships no control for capturing a chord, so the picker is a fixed list rather than a hand-rolled recorder: every entry is known-good, and it cannot produce a chord the main process has to refuse.

Files: apps/magimail/src/quick-compose.ts, apps/magimail/src/account-picker.ts, focusToField() in apps/magimail/src/compose-fields.ts.

Sequence

1. globalShortcut fires in the Electron main process.
2. app.focus({ steal: true }), which runs before anything goes on screen rather than after.
3. The account picker, if there is more than one account (see below).
4. openDetachedComposeWindow() on the chosen account's partition, titled New Message — <account>.
5. focusToField() polls until Gmail's compose inputs exist, then focuses To.

None of this needs the main window to exist, or any account's web view to be loaded. That matters, because the hotkey exists for the times the app has been sitting in the background.

The chord is registered with Electron's globalShortcut rather than in the Swift helper: it is the same Carbon RegisterEventHotKey underneath, and a hotkey has no appearance for a native surface to get right, so routing it through the helper would only add a stdio round trip and a second place for the setting to fall out of sync.

Which account, and who asks

composeAccountPicker: 'active', the default, means "compose from the account you are looking at". That only answers anything where an account is on screen, so it governs the main window and nothing else. Every other surface either names an account itself or has to ask:

chooseComposeAccount() is that one question, and fromMainWindow is how the main window claims its exemption. Asking by default means a surface added later has to opt out deliberately rather than silently guess.

Choosing does not switch accounts. The main window and the tray do switch, because compose lands in the window the user is already looking at. The hotkey does not, because the user is in another application and would come back to a main window showing something they never chose.

The alert hangs off a parent window as a sheet when one is given, and goes up parentless otherwise. From a hotkey or a mailto:, the main window may be minimised, buried or closed.

If a chord is refused

globalShortcut.register() returns false when another application asked for the chord first. That is logged, and the setting is left exactly as the user set it rather than silently flipped to Off behind their back; they picked it, and the picker offers three others. The settings window is not told, so a refused chord looks chosen but does nothing. Telling it would need an event back down the stdio transport.