top | item 47147185

Tuna: A new, modern, modal launcher for macOS

100 points| inatreecrown2 | 5 days ago |tunaformac.com

40 comments

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mikker|5 days ago

Hey nerds! I made Tuna – happy to answer any and all questions. Thank you for posting it OP!

_rend|5 days ago

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 :)

mojifwisi|3 days ago

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?

steve_adams_86|5 days ago

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.

Brajeshwar|5 days ago

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/

mikker|4 days ago

I need to what? The website?

SebastianKra|5 days ago

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.

1123581321|5 days ago

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.

mikker|4 days ago

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?

eviks|4 days ago

> 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

mikker|4 days ago

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?

tolerance|5 days ago

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.

mikker|5 days ago

Haha ... so ... it worked?

anhthang|3 days ago

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.

insane_dreamer|4 days ago

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.

alwillis|5 days ago

This looks awesome! I’m excited to try it out.

Loved Quicksilver back in the day.

alwillis|2 days ago

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...

mikker|5 days ago

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

n8henrie|5 days ago

Quicksilver is still around!

pxtail|5 days ago

Butchered fish meat piece as the app icon is kind of weird from my perspective.

Permik|5 days ago

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)

mikker|5 days ago

Why?