Launcher

A minimal, fast macOS app launcher. Click the dock icon, type, press enter. That's it.

Why

macOS Launchpad was removed in Tahoe. Spotlight does too much. Raycast/Alfred are overkill for "just open an app". This is ~500 lines of Swift that does one thing well.

• Fast. Cold start < 30 ms, search < 1 ms per query, 180+ apps indexed.
• Fuzzy search. ntn → Notion. fndr → Finder. saf → Safari.
• Keyboard layout aware. Accidentally typed тщешщт on the Russian layout? Finds Notion.
• Recents. Apps you open often rank higher.
• Auto-reindex. FSEvents watcher — new apps appear without relaunching.
• No dependencies. Pure Swift + SwiftUI + AppKit.

Install

From release

Download the latest .zip from Releases, unzip, drag Launcher.app to /Applications.

First launch: right-click → Open (ad-hoc signed, Gatekeeper needs the override once).

From source

Requires macOS 14+, Xcode command-line tools.

git clone https://github.com/hormold/launcher.git
cd launcher
bash build.sh --install --run

Usage

• Click the dock icon → search field is focused, type → Enter opens top match.
• ↑ / ↓ — navigate results.
• Esc — hide the window.
• Search looks in /Applications, ~/Applications, /System/Applications, Utilities, Setapp, CoreServices/Applications, and Finder.

Pin to dock

After first launch, right-click the dock icon → Options → Keep in Dock.

Build flags

bash build.sh                 # just build .app
bash build.sh --run           # build + launch
bash build.sh --install       # build + copy to /Applications + refresh Dock
bash build.sh --sign          # build + code-sign with first identity in keychain
bash build.sh --install --run # full dev loop

To sign with a specific identity:

bash build.sh --sign="Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID)"

CLI modes

The binary has hidden diagnostic modes that run without UI:

Launcher --probe "notion"    # show top 10 matches + variants
Launcher --self-test         # run scenario test suite
Launcher --bench             # scan + search timing
Launcher --integrity         # verify indexed apps still exist

Architecture

file	role
LauncherApp.swift	@main, window lifecycle, dock-reopen handling
AppIndex.swift	/Applications scan, cache, FSEvents watcher
FSWatcher.swift	FSEventStream wrapper for auto-reindex
SearchEngine.swift	fuzzy scorer: exact > prefix > word > substring > subsequence
KeyboardLayout.swift	QWERTY ↔ ЙЦУКЕН key-position swap
Recents.swift	UserDefaults-backed MRU list
ContentView.swift	SwiftUI search UI + keyboard nav
main.swift	entry point + CLI flag handling

Index cached to ~/Library/Caches/Launcher/index.json. Recents in UserDefaults under launcher.recents.

Not planned

• Global hotkey (dock click is the trigger — one mental model).
• Plugin system.
• Web search / calculator / clipboard history.
• Window management.

If you want those, use Raycast.

License

MIT.