v0.2.0

Emacs Launcher now stays warm in the background and surfaces your recent Emacs files
in Spotlight. As before, it bridges Finder, the Dock, Spotlight, drag-and-drop, and URL
schemes to a running Emacs daemon, speaking the Emacs server protocol directly over
the daemon's local socket — no emacsclient binary required.

Highlights

• Faster after the first launch. The launcher now stays resident in the background
  (no Dock icon, tiny memory footprint) instead of quitting after each use, so every
  later open — Finder, Spotlight, drag-and-drop, org-protocol, emacs:// — responds
  instantly without paying a cold start. Warm start is the default; a switch in the settings
  panel can turn it off to revert to quitting after each use.
• Recent files in Spotlight. Your Emacs recent files (recentf) are published to
  Spotlight; find one by name and it opens straight into your Emacs frame. The list is
  read live from the running daemon (with an on-disk fallback), so it stays current.
• Redesigned ⌥ Option panel. Hold ⌥ Option while launching to open a panel with three
  sections: install/uninstall the daemon LaunchAgent, the recent-files source (auto-detected
  from Emacs, with an optional override and a Spotlight on/off switch), and an explanation
  of background activation — including a Kill Emacs Launcher button to stop the
  resident app.
• --recentf for third-party scripts. The binary can print your recent files as JSON
  ([{title, subtitle, path}, …]), ready to feed launchers and scripts such as LaunchBar.

Installation

Download the attached zip, unzip it, drag Emacs Launcher.app to ~/Applications,
and run it once so macOS registers the file-type and URL-scheme associations. The build
is universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), Developer ID-signed, and notarized.

Upgrading from 0.1.0: replace the app in ~/Applications and launch it once. To stop the
new resident process at any time, hold ⌥ Option while launching and choose Kill Emacs
Launcher.

Requires macOS 12 (Monterey) or later and Emacs run as a daemon.

v0.1.0

First public release of Emacs Launcher — a small, fast macOS app that bridges
Finder, the Dock, Spotlight, drag-and-drop, and URL schemes to a running Emacs daemon
(emacs --daemon). It speaks the Emacs server protocol directly over the daemon's local
socket — no emacsclient binary required.

Highlights

• Open With → Emacs Launcher for text, source, Org, Emacs Lisp, Markdown, and more —
  files open in your existing Emacs frame, reusing it instead of spawning a new one (a
  frame is created only when none exists yet).
• Reliably raises Emacs to the foreground, including the activation workaround needed
  on macOS 14 and later.
• org-protocol:// support for org-capture, org-roam, and friends.
• emacs:// links that open a file — optionally at a line and column — from
  anywhere macOS resolves URLs (Obsidian, Things, notes, …).
• Invisible launcher — no Dock bounce or stray icon; it does its job and quits.
• Offers to install a daemon LaunchAgent when no Emacs server is reachable.

Installation

Download the attached zip, unzip it, drag Emacs Launcher.app to ~/Applications,
and run it once so macOS registers the file-type and URL-scheme associations. The build
is universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), Developer ID-signed, and notarized.

Requires macOS 12 (Monterey) or later and Emacs run as a daemon.