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. --recentffor 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.