The SpaceLauncher Story

SpaceLauncher came from a small frustration: opening and switching between the same few apps all day still felt slower than it should.

Spotlight-like launchers are excellent when you want to search. Alfred, LaunchBar, Raycast, and Spotlight itself are good places for discovery, fuzzy memory, and commands you do not use often enough to memorize.

But the apps I opened every day were not discovery problems. I already knew I wanted Safari, Xcode, Terminal, Notes, or a specific folder. Searching for them meant opening a box, typing enough letters, reading the result, and confirming it. That works, but it still asks your eyes and attention to join the task.

For those repeated actions, I wanted something closer to muscle memory.

The Space Key

The best trigger key was already under my thumb.

Space is big, central, and easy to hit without twisting either hand. For frequent app switching, I still cannot think of a faster physical trigger than holding Space and pressing one remembered key: Space S for Safari, Space T for Terminal, Space F D for Downloads.

The hard part is that Space is also normal typing. Real typing overlaps: people often press the next key before the previous key is fully released, and that happens around Space constantly. A good Space-led shortcut layer has to preserve normal typing first, then recognize intentional holds.

That is the part SpaceLauncher is built around.

The Prototype

Before building the app, I used Karabiner to prove the idea. That prototype was enough to show the feeling: once the mapping settled into memory, switching apps stopped feeling like a visual search task.

Karabiner is excellent for low-level keyboard remapping, but the SpaceLauncher idea wanted something more focused:

• Keep Space typing normal.
• Treat a deliberate hold as a leader key.
• Show hints while learning.
• Run app, URL, file, script, menu, and keystroke actions directly.
• Keep the bindings editable without living in a remapping config.

When the old Karabiner path stopped working for me after a macOS update, the missing shortcut layer felt bad enough that I built SpaceLauncher as its own app.

The Role It Plays

SpaceLauncher is not trying to replace Raycast, Alfred, LaunchBar, Spotlight, Karabiner, Hammerspoon, or Keyboard Maestro.

I use the mental split this way:

• Use search tools for the long tail.
• Use remapping tools for keyboard behavior.
• Use automation tools for workflows.
• Use SpaceLauncher for the small set of actions you know by heart and run constantly.

That smaller focus matters. You do not need a key sequence for everything. Start with the apps and folders you open every day. If a command is still something you search for, leave it in Raycast or Spotlight. If it becomes a habit, give it a SpaceLauncher binding.

The original Chinese write-up has more of the early story and old implementation notes: 找不到用起来顺手的 Mac 快捷键工具，于是我自己开发了一个：SpaceLauncher.