Trigger Mode in depth — Hold, Toggle, and Strict

Trigger Mode is the single setting that decides how the radial menu feels under your hand. The wedges are the same; the actions are the same; but a Hold trigger and a Toggle trigger are different shapes of motion. This guide walks through both, explains when each one wins, and covers the Pro-only Strict wedge selection that quietly fixes a class of misfires you might not have noticed.

Hold mode — the default

When you press your trigger, the menu appears at the cursor. While you keep the trigger held, dragging snaps the cursor's nearest wedge into a highlighted state. Letting go of the trigger fires whatever's highlighted at that moment. If your cursor is inside the central dead zone when you release, nothing fires — that's the safe cancel.

Hold is the right default because it collapses three steps into one motion: summon, aim, and commit are the same gesture. Once you've used it for a few days, your hand stops thinking about the menu at all. You hold-flick-release and the app launches. There's no panel to read, no element to click on.

Hold mode shines for:

• Mouse triggers (side buttons, middle click). Your hand is already on the device.
• Keyboard triggers like F19 or a remapped Caps Lock — keys you can press-and-hold without finger gymnastics.
• Repetitive launches: ten times a day to your messaging app, twenty times to your editor.

Toggle mode — when reading wins over reflex

In Toggle mode, you tap the trigger to open the menu. The menu stays on screen until you click a wedge or tap the trigger again. There's no "while held" — you can take all the time you need.

Toggle is slower per launch, but slower can be the right answer:

• You're using a sub-menu structure you haven't memorized yet. Reading wedge labels matters more than speed.
• You're keyboard-only — Toggle pairs perfectly with Keyboard Navigation, where you tap the trigger, press a number, done.
• You're on a laptop trackpad with a finicky deep-press — holding down a button-style trigger feels worse than tapping.
• You're showing the menu to someone, walking through your setup, or recording a screencast.

To switch: Settings → Hotkey → Trigger Mode, pick Toggle. The trigger you already configured (hotkey or mouse button) becomes a tap-to-open / tap-to-close.

Strict wedge selection — the Pro-only safety net

When Toggle mode is on, an enabled Strict wedge selection changes a quiet detail: a click only commits if it lands inside the visible wedge shape, not just somewhere in the wedge's angular zone.

Without Strict, Swik treats the entire 45° (or 72°, or whatever your wedge count divides into) sector as a hit zone, all the way out to the screen edge. That's fast for muscle memory, but it means a click 600px away from the menu can still fire whatever wedge that direction lives in. Most of the time that's a feature; occasionally it's a misfire.

Strict mode draws a tighter target: the click has to actually land inside the rendered wedge to commit. If you click outside the menu's visible footprint, nothing happens. This is worth turning on if:

• You've ever had a "wait, why did Slack just open?" moment after clicking somewhere far from the menu.
• You use a dense menu with many small wedges and want to avoid neighbor-wedge slips.
• You like the menu staying open as a "menu palette" you can dismiss without committing.

It's a Pro feature because it's the kind of polish that matters most to people deep enough into their setup to have noticed the misfire.

Quick comparison

Mixing the two — the trigger-per-context idea

You don't have to pick once. A common setup is:

1. Mouse side button → Hold. Used a hundred times a day for the top ring.
2. Hotkey (e.g. Right Option) → Toggle. Used when you want to read a sub-menu, or when the mouse isn't in your hand.

Both can coexist. The mouse trigger is configured in Settings → Hotkey → Additional Triggers; the keyboard hotkey lives at the top of the same tab. Pro-tier feature.

Troubleshooting