App launcher

The launcher is the root screen. One search covers your apps, System Settings panes, commands, quicklinks, snippets, system actions, window commands and layouts, custom commands, Quick Actions, extension commands and upcoming meetings.

return opens what is selected. ⌘K shows everything else you can do with it.

With nothing typed

Favorites come first, then each section in this order:

Meetings → Applications → System Settings → Extensions → Quicklinks → Snippets → System Actions → Window Layouts → Window Management → Custom Commands → Quick Actions → Commands

Each section is in alphabetical order, and stays that way. A list that reorders itself as you use it is hard to scan.

When a meeting is about to start, a join card sits above everything.

When you type

The sections fold into one Results list, ordered by how well each entry matches. A few things can appear around it:

• A calculator card at the top when your text is a calculation, like 12% of 80 or time in Tokyo.
• A color card when you paste a color like #FF5733.
• Open in Browser at the top when you type a web address or a bare domain, like github.com.
• "Use … with" rows at the bottom, which send your text somewhere else. See Fallbacks.

Listing a whole category

Type a section's exact name, like Snippets, Snippet or Window Management, and you get that whole category under its own heading.

It has to be the exact name. An app whose name is exactly your text still shows too, which is why typing System Settings lists both the app and its panes.

How matching works

Tinycast looks at several names for each entry, and trusts some more than others:

How the letters match matters too: an exact match beats one at the start, which beats one at the start of a word, which beats one in the middle, which beats scattered letters.

One rule never bends: typing a name or alias exactly always wins, however often you picked something else. Everything below that can move with learned ranking.

A few details keep results sensible:

• Bundle identifiers only match as typed, never by scattered letters. Otherwise almost any short search would hit almost every app. They also match without the leading com., so apple.Photos works, while pasting the full com.apple.Photos still finds it.
• An extension's name ranks low. An extension called Safari can never take that search from the real Safari.

Names in your language

Apps are shown the way Finder shows them, in your Mac's language. The English name still works, so on a Portuguese Mac both Find My and Buscar find the same app.

Apps also match the other names macOS knows them by: Address Book finds Contacts, System Preferences finds System Settings, and browser, 浏览器 or 사파리 all find Safari.

Names in other scripts get a Latin spelling too: 微信 answers to weixin and wx, メモ帳 to memo, and Яндекс to yandeks.

If you renamed an app in Finder, both the old and the new name find it.

Learned ranking

Tinycast learns which result you pick for a search, on your Mac, and moves it up next time.

Pick WhatsApp after typing wha, and it also comes up sooner for w and wh. The more often and more recently you pick something, the stronger the boost.

These do not teach it, because none of them is a search: opening something with its own shortcut, launching a favorite with ⌘ and a number, listing a category, and Open in Browser.

Resetting. For one entry: ⌘K → Reset Ranking, shown only when that entry has learned something. For everything: Settings → General → Learned ranking → Reset.

What it learns stays in launcher-ranking.json in Tinycast's own folder and goes nowhere else.

Search scopes

Settings → Applications → Search Scopes decides which folders are searched for apps. A scope can be a folder or a single .app.

The defaults cover /Applications, /System/Applications, both Utilities folders, /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications, the hidden system folder where Safari really lives, ~/Applications, and Finder on its own.

Tinycast looks one folder deep, so /Applications/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve.app is found without its own scope. Anything deeper needs a scope of its own. It never looks inside an app bundle.

Scopes are saved with ~ shortened, so a backup still makes sense on another Mac. Changing them searches again straight away.

Actions on an app

Open ⌘K with an app selected:

Restart Application and Quit Application only appear while the app is running. Both quit politely, so an app with unsaved work still asks you to save. Restart waits up to five seconds for the app to quit, then opens it again. If the app refuses to quit, nothing is reopened.

To quit everything at once, use the Quit All Applications system action. It leaves Finder and Tinycast running.

Hiding a result

⇧⌘H (Hide from Search) takes the selected entry out of search results. The palette stays open on the same search.

It works for apps, System Settings panes, commands, Quick Actions, system actions, window commands and window layouts. To bring one back, tick its checkbox again in that Settings pane.

Hiding only changes what search shows. The app stays installed, and its favorite, alias, learned ranking and shortcut all keep working.

Per-app shortcuts

Any app can have its own global shortcut, set in Settings → Applications. Press it to bring the app to the front; press it again while the app is in front to hide it.

See Hotkeys for recording shortcuts and the double-tap option.

Switching a whole section off

Settings → Applications has Enable Applications, plus a checkbox per app.

• Enable Applications off takes every app out of search and turns off every per-app shortcut.
• A single app's checkbox only hides that one row. Its shortcut keeps working.

System Settings, System Actions and Commands each have the same kind of switch in their own pane.