Select Text with Element Burst Mode

The recipe#

1. Enter Element Menu Mode for the focused window (XW) or the element below the cursor (XE).
2. Hold Space to open the menu.
3. Choose Element Burst.
4. Press Enter on the item you want, or hold Command and type its hint.

Element Burst Mode rebuilds the text from inside the element, so you get a more complete result than a hand-drawn selection across a fragmented layout.

Get several values at once#

The panel closes after a copy by default. Hold Shift while copying to keep it open and take several items in a row.

It also extracts structured values from the collected text: dates, email addresses, links, phone numbers, and file paths. When you want the link out of a paragraph, you copy the link itself rather than the paragraph.

Adjust before copying#

Press Command + Enter to open an editor for the selected item, make small changes, then copy the result.

When to use the drag instead#

Use Select Text by Simulating a Drag when you need a real selection in the app, because something downstream acts on it, or when the text is rendered as pixels that OCR reaches but the Accessibility API does not.

Element Burst Mode is an Unlocked feature. See Plans and Licensing.

Next#

• Use Cases index
• Scripting to automate a repeated extraction