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 the selection. ⌘K shows everything else you can do with it.

With nothing typedCopy Anchor Link

Favorites come first, followed by 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 sorted alphabetically and keeps that order, because a list that reorders itself as you use it is hard to scan.

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

When you typeCopy Anchor Link

The sections merge into one Results list, sorted by how well each entry matches. A few extras 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.
• Files below the results, when File Search has Show in launcher on and you type three or more characters.
• "Use … with" rows at the bottom, which send your text somewhere else. See Fallbacks.

Listing a whole categoryCopy Anchor Link

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

The name has to match exactly. An app with exactly that name still appears too, which is why typing System Settings lists both the app and its panes.

How matching worksCopy Anchor Link

Redcast checks several names for each entry and gives some of them more weight than others:

How the letters match also counts. From strongest to weakest: an exact match, a match at the start of the name, a match at the start of a word, a match in the middle of a word, and scattered letters.

Typing a name or alias exactly always puts that entry first, no matter how often you picked something else. Everything below that can change with learned ranking.

A few more rules keep results useful:

• Bundle identifiers only match as typed, never by scattered letters. Otherwise almost any short search would match almost every app. They also match without the leading com., so apple.Photos works, and pasting the full com.apple.Photos still finds the app.
• An extension's name ranks low. An extension called Safari can't push the real Safari out of first place.

Names in your languageCopy Anchor Link

Apps are shown the way Finder shows them, in your Mac's language. The English name still works, so on a Mac set to Portuguese, 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 also get a Latin spelling: 微信 matches weixin and wx, メモ帳 matches memo, and Яндекс matches yandeks.

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

Learned rankingCopy Anchor Link

Redcast remembers which result you pick for a search and moves it up the next time. This happens on your Mac.

If you pick WhatsApp after typing wha, it also ranks higher for w and wh. The more often and the more recently you pick something, the bigger the boost.

Some ways of opening things don't count, because they aren't searches: opening something with its own shortcut, opening a favorite with ⌘ and a number, listing a category, and Open in Browser.

Resetting. For one entry, choose ⌘K → Reset Ranking. It only appears when Redcast has learned something about that entry. To reset everything, go to Settings → General → Learned ranking → Reset.

This data is stored in launcher-ranking.json in Redcast's own folder and is never sent anywhere.

Search scopesCopy Anchor Link

Settings → Applications → Search Scopes sets which folders Redcast searches 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 is actually installed, ~/Applications, and Finder itself.

Redcast searches one folder deep, so it finds /Applications/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve.app without a separate scope. Apps nested deeper need their own scope. Redcast never looks inside an app bundle.

Scopes are saved with your home folder written as ~, so a backup still works on another Mac. Redcast searches again as soon as you change them.

Actions on an appCopy Anchor Link

Press ⌘K with an app selected:

Restart Application and Quit Application only appear while the app is running. Both ask the app to quit normally, so an app with unsaved work still asks you to save it. Restart waits up to five seconds for the app to quit, then opens it again. If the app doesn't quit, it isn't reopened.

To quit every app at once, use the Quit All Applications system action. It leaves Finder and Redcast running.

Hiding a resultCopy Anchor Link

⇧⌘H (Hide from Search) removes the selected entry from 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 show an entry again, select its checkbox in the matching Settings pane. On a quicklink or custom command it's Hide from Root Search, and you turn Show in root search back on in its editor.

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

Per-app shortcutsCopy Anchor Link

You can give any app its own global shortcut in Settings → Applications. Press it to bring the app to the front, and press it again while the app is in front to hide it.

See Hotkeys for recording shortcuts and using double-tap shortcuts.

Switching a whole section offCopy Anchor Link

Settings → Applications has an Enable Applications switch, plus a checkbox for each app.

• Turning off Enable Applications removes every app from search and turns off every per-app shortcut.
• Clearing one app's checkbox only hides that app from search. Its shortcut keeps working.

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