Nanolight

A launcher for the Mac, Windows and Linux, drawn by nanoui.
Apps, math, Google, Grok, X and Raycast extensions: one keystroke away. Native Zig, no Electron, about 2 MB.

_{Watch it with sound → · How it was made}

• Finds apps as you type: whole names, starts of words, initials (ss is System Settings), letters in order, and typos (chorme is Chrome). What you open often climbs.
• System Settings panes (Mac): "login items", "wifi" or "dark mode" lists the pane, under the apps, and Return opens System Settings right at it.
• Completes inline: the rest of the top app's name, or of Google's top suggestion, is drawn faintly after the caret. Tab or → takes it; Return never does.
• Does math: 2^10 * 3 answers 3,072 (and 0xC00). Return copies it.
• Google suggestions: up to four, under the apps, the words you add in bold. Nothing that reads as an address (a dot, a slash, an @) is sent.
• Results in the panel: Return on a search shows Google's page in the panel itself. Esc goes back to the list, ⌘↩ opens it in your browser, ⌘[ goes back a page. Prefer the browser? Turn on Open Searches in Browser in Settings: Return opens your browser, and ⌘↩ shows the page in the panel.
• Ask Grok, search X, a row away.
• Raycast extensions: extensions from the Raycast Store's repository (MIT) run in the panel: their lists, details and forms, their actions on ⌘K. Choose Install Raycast Extension… to search the store. They are React and TypeScript, so they need Node.js 20 or later on your computer; Nanolight brings none, and runs them through its own version of @raycast/api (raycast/README.md). AI, OAuth and the menu bar aren't supported.
• Raycast script commands (raycast/script-commands, MIT): any script with @raycast.* comments, dropped in the Script Commands folder, is a row. Nanolight runs it itself, no Node needed: its arguments as a form, its output as it prints (fullOutput), its last line (compact), or nothing (silent).
• Settings in the panel: ⌘, (Ctrl+, on a PC), the gear in the footer, or type "settings".
• ⌘1–⌘9 run a row at once; ↑ ↓ and ⌃N ⌃P move.
• On the Mac it lives in the menu bar: no Dock icon, and nothing drawn while it's idle. Show in Menu Bar in Settings hides the icon; Settings stays a ⌘, away in the panel.

Off until you turn it on: choose Sign In with Codegraff in Settings (or the menu bar icon's menu on the Mac). Your browser opens codegraff.com to approve the sign-in, and from then on every computer signed in to the same account shares:

• the key that opens Nanolight,
• whether Google suggestions are on,
• how often you open each app, so an empty panel suggests the same apps everywhere.

Two Macs merge rather than overwrite: the key and the suggestions setting follow whichever Mac changed them last, and each app keeps its higher count. Nothing else is sent: no queries, no history, no files. The sign-in key is kept in your Keychain, and Sign Out of Codegraff revokes it.

Syncing goes through your Codegraff account, so Codegraff's terms and privacy policy apply to it. New accounts made by signing in from Nanolight get $2 of Codegraff credit.

From the latest release:

• Mac: nanolight-macos-arm64.dmg. Open it and drag Nanolight to Applications. macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon.
• Windows: nanolight-windows-x86_64.zip. Unzip it anywhere you can write and run nanolight.exe. Windows 10 or later.
• Linux: nanolight-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (or aarch64). Unpack it and run nanolight. It needs GTK 3 (or 4) and an X11 session for its key; on Wayland, bind nanolight --toggle to a key in your desktop's keyboard settings.

On first run a short welcome picks the key that opens it and says who else holds it. On the Mac that's ⌘Space, ⌥Space, ⌃Space or ⌥⌘Space (any other, such as ⌥X, can be recorded later in Settings; Spotlight gives up ⌘Space in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Spotlight); on a PC, Alt Space, Ctrl Alt Space, Ctrl Space or Ctrl Shift Space. Releases update themselves from this repository's releases, restarting into the new version while the panel is away.

You need Zig 0.17.0 and Xcode or the Command Line Tools.

zig build test      # search, math, suggestions and the panel, through nanoui's Tester
zig build run       # build and open it
zig build app       # zig-out/Nanolight.app, for /Applications
VERSION=0.1.0 sh macos/package.sh   # the Mac release: signed app, disk image, update zip, manifest.json
VERSION=0.1.0 sh pc/package.sh      # Windows' zip and Linux's tarballs, added to manifest.json
zig build -Dtarget=x86_64-windows-gnu   # any target from any machine
cd raycast && npm test              # the Raycast extensions' host

macos/package.sh signs with $CODESIGN_IDENTITY and notarizes when notary credentials are set (see the script); otherwise it signs ad hoc. Pushing a v* tag runs .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds, signs and attaches the release.

The icon is drawn by tools/icon.py. src/backdrop.jpg (the film's cover art) was made with OpenAI's image model.

MIT