This is awesome! Love to see something new in this space, especially so heavily inspired by QuickSilver. The UI is slick and fast, and the fuzzy matching (and the match UI itself) is excellent.
If you're taking feedback, I've been a >decade-long user of LaunchBar, and I've yet to find another launcher that handles my most common actions quite as well (except maybe Alfred):
1. I launch a ton of URLs directly from LaunchBar, and it's a killer feature for me to be able to start typing a URL (not intending to match anything) and as soon as I type a period, LaunchBar converts the search to a URL (and inserts 'https://' and '.com'). e.g., if I type "abc.", LaunchBar will expand to "https://abc.com" with the ".com" highlighted for replacement (and hitting Return will open the URL immediately). Right now, if I want to do the same with Tuna and my default mode is Fuzzy Mode, I believe I need to hit '"' to enter Text Mode, type the URL, hit Tab, then search for the "Open URL" action (which also won't recognize a "bare" URL without the scheme, so won't show up for, e.g., "abc.com") — but happy to be wrong! I think it'd be swell if it were possible to configure Tuna to, on '.', convert into text mode, automatically insert "https://" and ".com", and automatically pre-populate the "Open URL" action so I could just hit Return to confirm and launch
2. I use the inline calculator a lot, and really like the "auto math" switch when typing digits (and really like the carve-out for 1Password, where typing '1' will show 1Password in fuzzy search instead of switching to the calculator); switching to text mode automatically on numeric input would be really helpful to do the same
3. I have a few custom search templates in LaunchBar I use all the time (several different search engines), and I'm not sure if it's possible to set up something similar directly inside of Tuna yet without writing custom services or an extension
Obviously, this is just how I use LaunchBar, and may not fit in with your vision of Tuna, but figured it might be some helpful food for thought! Thanks for your work on this :)
I'm a big fan of your other app Leader Key: it's the closest equivalent to the Windows+number keyboard shortcuts that I use all the time on my other computer (but better since you're not limited to 10 apps and you can use mnemonic shortcuts). Does the release of Tuna mean that Leader Key is now deprecated/unmaintained?
I came to ask about why I'd use this over Raycast, but watched your video before typing and wwwwow, this looks incredible. Much more in line with how I think and work.
At first I thought "ehhh, new conventions to learn, not so eager to do that", but by the end of the video you've convinced me there's something here worth learning. It seems very intuitive.
For what it's worth—as far as future extensions go—according to Raycast the things I did most in 2025 were:
- timers (ti, tab, enter hh:mm:ss values, return)
- dictionary (dw, tab, type word, return)
- inline calculator
- currency conversion
- focus sessions
- port manager
Edit to add:
When I fired up Tuna, onboarding began and I had to restart to grant disk access. It didn't restart at first. I then started it manually, and onboarding didn't resume. I had to manually choose "show onboarding" from the menu bar.
If this is to replace Alfred (the replacement for Quicksilver), you need to list the details of all features. Currently, the website looks too polished, as if the demo is “too good to be true.”
I started teaching my daughters to use Alfred because my multiple attempts at staying native with Spotlight has failed despite its recent advancements.
This composability was also a defining feature of Launchbar.
I loved it, but eventually found that Raycasts approach of having predefined plugins for each use case is more performant , discoverable and usable.
Kinda like how the unix philosophy was beaten by integrated full-stack applications.
* since anything can be composed, everything must be in the same search index. This slows down the index, and means you need to sift through more irrelevant results.
Looks nice! You have a good foundation in modal input order. How’s your file indexing and search compared to Alfred’s? RayCast struggles with this. Alfred’s is solid, especially stands out with `in` search.
Custom search query strings/results is important, too. I couldn’t tell how you support that from the marketing site.
Love that you're calling it a "marketing site"
Indexing is meant to be as fast as possible. It's good enough for my needs. You can add custom folders and/or their contents to the global index. Which I think would be the equivalent of "in" search?
Sorry, marketing site is reflexive use on my part. Not meant as a putdown in any way. :)
Alfred has three main search prefixes, find, open and in. Find does titles, in does in-document search. It's pretty fast and live-updates as you type. Find/open is the weird part relative to Tuna, as you'd rather decide which action to take after filtering down search results.
Anyway, now that I'm on my Mac, I was able to compare them. Alfred's search seems to be several times faster than Tuna's search (based on when Tuna shows the UI with search results.)
Tuna also chokes on adding too many folders to search; the settings pane beachballs and the app can't be used, even after force quitting and restarted. If that's due to heavy indexing, maybe that could be decoupled from the UI so it could search the partial index in the meantime. Or back the user out of folder depth they selected if it's not going to perform.
Tuna also has some of the same missing items that Raycast has, that Alfred finds; I know Alfred also makes use of Spotlight's index, but they do something in addition to that.
Great work — this looks really impressive. I’d love to give it a proper try sometime. For now, though, I’m still happily using Raycast and it covers my needs well.
You aren't even following the stupid Apple rule of supporting the latest 3 years of OS, how is expanding 1 year to 2 is not a problem for a text box with a bunch of extra functions?
Swift. I'm currently dog-fooding the implementation for many of the built-ins and the store downloadable ones. I want to let the API and approach settle a bit before making it public but they'll be Swift based and hopefully easy enough for someone experienced in any kind of programming to implement with the help of an AI agent or on their own.
After Quicksilver, I went to LaunchBar, a fine app. It seemed to lose momentum after a while… I tried going built-in with Tahoe's upgraded Spotlight, a big improvement compared to the original. But it wasn’t enough.
I resisted Raycast since it seemed like the Mac bloggers and podcasters were using it. But I finally gave in.
Now after giving Tuna a try, I realize what's been missing since Quicksilver: some whimsy; a Mac-assed[1] launcher. As capable as Raycast is, it has no personality; it’s just a tool. It's not fun to use.
Compared to the others, Tuna is fun to use. It looks right at home on the Mac.
I simply don't see how it's related to launcher software apart from name, I suppose author likes to eat tuna, may be down to personal preferences but I do not prefer to depict and associate my software with raw animals meat fragments.
What you see as disgusting chunks of flesh other people see as completely innocent normal pictures of super common food. Sushi is an emoji. It’s one step away from being repulsed because they call the UI widget a hamburger menu.
Hey nerds! I made Tuna – happy to answer any and all questions. Thank you for posting it OP!
This is awesome! Love to see something new in this space, especially so heavily inspired by QuickSilver. The UI is slick and fast, and the fuzzy matching (and the match UI itself) is excellent.
If you're taking feedback, I've been a >decade-long user of LaunchBar, and I've yet to find another launcher that handles my most common actions quite as well (except maybe Alfred):
1. I launch a ton of URLs directly from LaunchBar, and it's a killer feature for me to be able to start typing a URL (not intending to match anything) and as soon as I type a period, LaunchBar converts the search to a URL (and inserts 'https://' and '.com'). e.g., if I type "abc.", LaunchBar will expand to "https://abc.com" with the ".com" highlighted for replacement (and hitting Return will open the URL immediately). Right now, if I want to do the same with Tuna and my default mode is Fuzzy Mode, I believe I need to hit '"' to enter Text Mode, type the URL, hit Tab, then search for the "Open URL" action (which also won't recognize a "bare" URL without the scheme, so won't show up for, e.g., "abc.com") — but happy to be wrong! I think it'd be swell if it were possible to configure Tuna to, on '.', convert into text mode, automatically insert "https://" and ".com", and automatically pre-populate the "Open URL" action so I could just hit Return to confirm and launch
2. I use the inline calculator a lot, and really like the "auto math" switch when typing digits (and really like the carve-out for 1Password, where typing '1' will show 1Password in fuzzy search instead of switching to the calculator); switching to text mode automatically on numeric input would be really helpful to do the same
3. I have a few custom search templates in LaunchBar I use all the time (several different search engines), and I'm not sure if it's possible to set up something similar directly inside of Tuna yet without writing custom services or an extension
Obviously, this is just how I use LaunchBar, and may not fit in with your vision of Tuna, but figured it might be some helpful food for thought! Thanks for your work on this :)
I'm a big fan of your other app Leader Key: it's the closest equivalent to the Windows+number keyboard shortcuts that I use all the time on my other computer (but better since you're not limited to 10 apps and you can use mnemonic shortcuts). Does the release of Tuna mean that Leader Key is now deprecated/unmaintained?
I came to ask about why I'd use this over Raycast, but watched your video before typing and wwwwow, this looks incredible. Much more in line with how I think and work.
At first I thought "ehhh, new conventions to learn, not so eager to do that", but by the end of the video you've convinced me there's something here worth learning. It seems very intuitive.
For what it's worth—as far as future extensions go—according to Raycast the things I did most in 2025 were:
Edit to add:When I fired up Tuna, onboarding began and I had to restart to grant disk access. It didn't restart at first. I then started it manually, and onboarding didn't resume. I had to manually choose "show onboarding" from the menu bar.
Great notes! Thanks. The onboarding thing is fixed in next version.
If this is to replace Alfred (the replacement for Quicksilver), you need to list the details of all features. Currently, the website looks too polished, as if the demo is “too good to be true.”
I started teaching my daughters to use Alfred because my multiple attempts at staying native with Spotlight has failed despite its recent advancements.
https://brajeshwar.com/2026/alfred/
I need to what? The website?
This composability was also a defining feature of Launchbar.
I loved it, but eventually found that Raycasts approach of having predefined plugins for each use case is more performant , discoverable and usable.
Kinda like how the unix philosophy was beaten by integrated full-stack applications.
* since anything can be composed, everything must be in the same search index. This slows down the index, and means you need to sift through more irrelevant results.
Looks nice! You have a good foundation in modal input order. How’s your file indexing and search compared to Alfred’s? RayCast struggles with this. Alfred’s is solid, especially stands out with `in` search.
Custom search query strings/results is important, too. I couldn’t tell how you support that from the marketing site.
Love that you're calling it a "marketing site" Indexing is meant to be as fast as possible. It's good enough for my needs. You can add custom folders and/or their contents to the global index. Which I think would be the equivalent of "in" search?
Sorry, marketing site is reflexive use on my part. Not meant as a putdown in any way. :)
Alfred has three main search prefixes, find, open and in. Find does titles, in does in-document search. It's pretty fast and live-updates as you type. Find/open is the weird part relative to Tuna, as you'd rather decide which action to take after filtering down search results.
Anyway, now that I'm on my Mac, I was able to compare them. Alfred's search seems to be several times faster than Tuna's search (based on when Tuna shows the UI with search results.)
Tuna also chokes on adding too many folders to search; the settings pane beachballs and the app can't be used, even after force quitting and restarted. If that's due to heavy indexing, maybe that could be decoupled from the UI so it could search the partial index in the meantime. Or back the user out of folder depth they selected if it's not going to perform.
Tuna also has some of the same missing items that Raycast has, that Alfred finds; I know Alfred also makes use of Spotlight's index, but they do something in addition to that.
The index isn't for all the files. Of course, if one adds all the files anyway the experience should be better than what you describe.
There's a "Spotlight search" action that open a Finder window with the search query. I think that's how it'll work for now re: spotlight
Sorry, I think I've offended you. Just got excited; this is a favorite software category of mine.
Not at all! Current implementation is too easy to use "wrong". Index isn't really built for large trees. Working on a different take on it
Great work — this looks really impressive. I’d love to give it a proper try sometime. For now, though, I’m still happily using Raycast and it covers my needs well.
> New, modern launcher for macOS, built from the ground up
The only sign of modernity noticed is leaving good old stuff behind:
> macOS 15 Sequoia or newer required
It was Tahoe only at first but quite a few people asked me to lax the version requirement and now you're telling me that's a problem too?
You aren't even following the stupid Apple rule of supporting the latest 3 years of OS, how is expanding 1 year to 2 is not a problem for a text box with a bunch of extra functions?
lol
here is a presentation by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkm-ZFlivyI
If it looks like I'm excited it's only because I am
It is infectious; keep up the optimism and joy!
I don’t like this. I am content with Alfred! The landing page is so concise. The demo so straight forward and enticing. It all appears so novel.
Great work.
Haha ... so ... it worked?
Much to my chagrin. How will third-party extensions be implemented?
Swift. I'm currently dog-fooding the implementation for many of the built-ins and the store downloadable ones. I want to let the API and approach settle a bit before making it public but they'll be Swift based and hopefully easy enough for someone experienced in any kind of programming to implement with the help of an AI agent or on their own.
This answer made me download and install just to pay for it, whether I'll ever use it or not. But... >!there's no billing flow in this phase!<.
Now I want to pay for it twice.
Also saw open-source Raycast-aloke RustCast go by today, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141912 https://github.com/unsecretised/rustcast
I've been a satisfied Alfred user for ~10 years but there's always room for new tools like this. Kudos.
As others have mentioned, a clear list of features would be useful.
This looks awesome! I’m excited to try it out.
Loved Quicksilver back in the day.
After Quicksilver, I went to LaunchBar, a fine app. It seemed to lose momentum after a while… I tried going built-in with Tahoe's upgraded Spotlight, a big improvement compared to the original. But it wasn’t enough.
I resisted Raycast since it seemed like the Mac bloggers and podcasters were using it. But I finally gave in.
Now after giving Tuna a try, I realize what's been missing since Quicksilver: some whimsy; a Mac-assed[1] launcher. As capable as Raycast is, it has no personality; it’s just a tool. It's not fun to use.
Compared to the others, Tuna is fun to use. It looks right at home on the Mac.
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/mac-assed-mac-a...
Never forget! I've dm'ed with and shown Tuna to Alcor and he's been kind enough to bless both the app and my efforts. Great guy
Quicksilver is still around!
Butchered fish meat piece as the app icon is kind of weird from my perspective.
Ain't so different from a severed piece of a reproductive organ as a logo of a company :D (I'm talking about an apple tree and it's fruit)
[dead]
Why?
I simply don't see how it's related to launcher software apart from name, I suppose author likes to eat tuna, may be down to personal preferences but I do not prefer to depict and associate my software with raw animals meat fragments.
You're not gonna like my word processor called "Sausages and bacon"
Isn’t your own username also associated with animal parts?
What you see as disgusting chunks of flesh other people see as completely innocent normal pictures of super common food. Sushi is an emoji. It’s one step away from being repulsed because they call the UI widget a hamburger menu.