A keyboard-only application launcher for macOS, inspired by dmenu.
Press a hotkey, type a few letters, hit Enter. No Spotlight indexing, no mouse, no waiting.
Requires macOS 13.5 or later.
With Homebrew:
brew install dmenu-macOr download the latest dmenu-mac.zip from the releases page, unzip it, and move dmenu-mac.app to /Applications. Releases are signed and notarized by Apple.
To call dmenu-mac from scripts, put dmenu-mac.app/Contents/Resources/dmenu-mac on your PATH. Homebrew does this for you.
- Open dmenu-mac. It lives in the menu bar and waits for its hotkey.
- Press ⌘ Space anywhere to bring up the launcher.
- Start typing. Matching is fuzzy and case-insensitive, so
safristill finds Safari. - Press Enter to open the highlighted result, or Esc to dismiss.
Tip: dmenu-mac is best paired with Spotlight's shortcut turned off (System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Spotlight), or pick a different hotkey in dmenu-mac's settings.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘ Space | Show the launcher (configurable) |
| Tab / → | Move to the next result |
| Shift Tab / ← | Move to the previous result |
| Enter | Open the selected result, or run what you typed when nothing matches |
| Shift Enter | Run what you typed even if there are matches |
| Esc | Hide the launcher |
| ⌘ , | Open Settings |
The launcher does not steal focus: the app you were in stays in front and gets the keyboard back as soon as the bar closes.
- Apps in
/Applications,/System/Applications, and~/Applications, including symlinked folders such as the ones nix-darwin and home-manager create. - Bundled utilities like Keychain Access, Archive Utility, and Directory Utility.
- System Settings panes, so
dispopens Displays andnetopens Network. - Optionally, command-line programs from your
$PATH(see below).
The list refreshes on its own when apps are installed or removed.
If nothing matches what you typed, Enter runs the text as a shell command in your login shell, from your home directory. mpv ~/Movies/clip.mp4 plays a video without opening a terminal. Shift Enter does the same even when something matches.
To launch nvim, htop, ranger, and friends in a terminal window:
- Open Settings → General and turn on List programs from $PATH.
- Pick your terminal: Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty, Alacritty, kitty, WezTerm, or a custom command where
{cmd}is replaced by the program to run.
Programs from your login shell's $PATH (Homebrew, nix, ~/.local/bin, ...) then show up alongside apps, and typed commands like nvim notes.md open in that terminal too. The first time Terminal or iTerm2 is used, macOS asks to let dmenu-mac control it.
Open Settings with ⌘ , while the launcher is up, or from the menu bar icon.
- General: the global hotkey, and the terminal setup described above.
- Appearance: bar position (top or bottom of the screen), opacity, colors for the text, selection, and background, and the font and its size. Reset to Defaults undoes it all.
The menu bar icon also lets you show the launcher, turn Launch at Login on or off, and quit.
The dmenu-mac command takes a few flags, which makes it usable from scripts and hotkey daemons:
dmenu-mac --help| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
-p, --prompt <text> |
Show a prompt instead of the search field |
-b, --bottom |
Show the bar at the bottom of the screen for this run |
--no-custom |
Only accept items from the list; typed text that matches nothing is ignored |
--exit / --no-exit |
Quit after a selection, or stay in the background |
Pipe a list of choices in and the selection is printed to stdout, just like dmenu:
choice=$(printf 'Yes\nNo' | dmenu-mac -p "Are you sure?")When nothing matches (or with Shift Enter) the typed text is printed instead, unless you pass --no-custom. Pressing Esc prints nothing and exits with status 1.
When started from a shell or a hotkey daemon such as skhd, dmenu-mac exits as soon as you pick something or press Esc, so it can be bound to a key without leaving processes behind:
# ~/.config/skhd/skhdrc
alt - space : dmenu-mac
When opened as an app (Finder, Dock, Launch at Login) it stays running and waits for its hotkey. Use --exit or --no-exit to force either behaviour.
Spotlight has to index everything on disk, and on machines with a lot of files that keeps the CPU busy and the results slow. dmenu-mac only looks at your application folders, so it starts instantly, needs no index, and keeps working with Spotlight disabled entirely.
xcodebuild -skipPackagePluginValidation -skipMacroValidation \
-project dmenu-mac.xcodeproj -scheme dmenu-mac -configuration Debug test
# single test: add -only-testing:dmenu-macTests/SearchServiceTests[/testName]
swiftlint --strict # CI fails on warnings-skipPackagePluginValidation is required because SwiftLint runs as an Xcode build plugin.
Releases are cut with scripts/release.sh, see RELEASING.md.
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome.
GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.