Trigger Happy

A lightweight macOS menu-bar utility for global hotkeys, app launching, clipboard history, and a keyboard cheat sheet — with an optional BBS / PCBoard terminal look for its overlays.

Runs as a menu-bar app (no Dock icon), non-sandboxed, on macOS 14.0+.

Features

• Custom hotkeys — bind any key combination to launch an app (e.g. ⌃⇧F → Firefox). Registered via Carbon RegisterEventHotKey, so no Accessibility/Input Monitoring permission is needed.
• App Launcher (⌥Space) — fuzzy-search and launch any installed app.
• Clipboard History (⌥V) — searchable history with pinned/saved clips; paste on Enter.
• Cheat Sheet (⌥/) — a reference card of all your configured hotkeys.
• Two overlay themes (Settings → Overlay Theme):
  • Modern — frosted, native SwiftUI panels.
  • BBS — a 90s ANSI/PCBoard terminal aesthetic (CP437 double-line borders, monospaced grid, l33t/StUdLy chrome text, white-on-magenta "lightbar" selection, animated banner wordmark).

BBS theme options

When the BBS theme is active, additional settings appear:

• Color Scheme — 15 palettes: five originals (Classic, Midnight, Amber, Green, Synthwave) and ten ported from popular editor themes (Dracula, Nord, Solarized, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox, One Dark, Monokai, Catppuccin, GitHub Dark, Rosé Pine). One knob reskins every overlay; selection-bar text auto-picks light/dark for legibility.
• BBS Banner — the animated header wordmark: Theme (tracks the scheme's main color), Rainbow (full spectrum), or a fixed color (Cyan/Magenta/Amber/Green/Blue/Coral) shimmer.
• Launcher Layout — Center (a centered popup) or Quake (a full-width, one-line console that folds down from the top of the screen; query on the left, results listed horizontally).

Screenshots

Previews rendered from the app's real SwiftUI views with sample data.

Modern theme

Frosted native panels that follow the system's light or dark appearance — App Launcher, Clipboard History, and Cheat Sheet:

Light	Dark

BBS theme

Quake drop-down launcher — full-width, folds down from the top, results listed horizontally (matched query characters highlighted):

Clipboard History — searchable, with pinned/saved clips and a CP437 scrollbar:

Cheat Sheet — all your configured hotkeys at a glance:

Color schemes — one knob reskins every overlay (15 palettes, incl. popular editor themes):

Default hotkeys

Action	Shortcut
App Launcher	⌥Space
Clipboard History	⌥V
Cheat Sheet	⌥/

All three are configurable in Settings, alongside your custom app-launch bindings.

Build & Run

Pure Xcode project — no SPM, no CocoaPods. A Makefile wraps the usual steps:

make build      # compile (xcodebuild under the hood)
make install    # build, copy TriggerHappy.app to the project root, and launch it
make run        # relaunch the copied app
make clean      # remove build products

Or drive xcodebuild directly:

xcodebuild -project TriggerHappy.xcodeproj -scheme TriggerHappy -configuration Debug build
cp -R ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/TriggerHappy-*/Build/Products/Debug/TriggerHappy.app ./TriggerHappy.app
open ./TriggerHappy.app

Architecture

See CLAUDE.md for a detailed tour. In brief:

• Dual hotkey pipelines — user bindings (HotkeyManager + BindingStore) and built-in system hotkeys (AppDelegate), both on Carbon.
• Floating panels — App Launcher, Clipboard, and Cheat Sheet each host a SwiftUI view in a borderless KeyablePanel, positioned on the screen under the cursor.
• Theme system — BBS resolves its palette through the selected BBSScheme; the overlays branch on LauncherTheme (modern/bbs) and, for the launcher, LauncherLayout (center/quake). All preferences persist to UserDefaults.

Credits

The BBS/ANSI aesthetic is inspired by Cathode, a sister TUI harness for Claude Code — same CP437 palette, animated rainbow wordmark, and lightbar conventions.

License

TODO: add a license.