Tinycast
A tiny, fully native macOS launcher — the essentials, without the bloat.
Around 3 MB on disk and under 100 MB of RAM — no Electron, no telemetry, no background CPU churn. Just SwiftUI + AppKit with zero dependencies. It's fast because there's nothing to it.
Features
- App launcher — fuzzy-search and launch anything, pin favorites, see what's running.
- Calculator — do math and unit conversions inline, right in the palette.
- Clipboard history — text and images, searchable, pasted back into the app you were using.
- Global hotkey — one shortcut summons the palette from anywhere.
- Per-app hotkeys — bind a key to an app; press it to toggle (focus/hide).
Install
brew trust --tap abue-ammar/tinycast # required for third-party taps
brew tap abue-ammar/tinycast
brew install --cask tinycast # stable
brew install --cask tinycast@beta # beta (installs side-by-side)
Each channel is a separate app (Tinycast.app, Tinycast Beta.app) with its own settings and
permissions, so you can run stable next to the beta.
Tinycast is self-signed. Installing via Homebrew clears the macOS quarantine flag for you
automatically on every install and update, so there's nothing to run. (If you download the DMG
directly from Releases instead, clear it once: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Tinycast.app".)
Permissions
Accessibility — needed only so Tinycast can paste a clipboard item back into the app you came from. You're prompted the first time you paste; grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
Using it
- Open Settings → General and record a global shortcut to summon Tinycast.
- Press it anywhere → the palette floats in. Type to filter, ↩ to launch.
- Tab switches between Apps and Clipboard; ↑/↓ move, Esc dismisses.
- Settings → App Hotkeys — search an app and record a shortcut to toggle it.
Building from source
See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md for the toolchain, build, packaging, release, and website workflows, and DESIGN.md for the UI design system.
