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Comment by BrunoBernardino | Hacker News Reader

Thanks, that's perfectly fair!

It's something we've felt has been best served by the OS at this point (macOS and Linux, at least), and adds significant complexity (we need to start tracking multiple currencies, their current exchange rates, parse different regex/ways of people doing that), so we've been reluctant to add it so far.

I'd be curious to understand if you bypass those OS entry points (and why) and use search for those things.

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I also find myself constantly using search engine conversions because it’s easier to type in plain text rather than scroll through a menu of [class of unit] and [specific unit]. Plus I have a browser open a lot of the time. I’m using kagi and my main complaint with their unit conversion is that you can’t modify the values in the results. If I type “in to mm” it defaults to 1 inch = 254mm, and I have to explicitly search for, say, “45 in to mm” each time. Being able to just search the first one and then type in my value on either side of the conversion is something that other engines do well

I might look into some opt-in setting that enables some regex patterns to do things like that. I'm not so sure about currency rates unless we only sync that once per day, as a scheduled job, for example. That might work.

Heads-up, we just shipped a small widget for calculator, unit conversion, and top 10 currency conversion, rates checked against the European Central Bank daily. It can be enabled in the settings.

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