Use Stackbar

Getting started

Install Stackbar, pick your hotkey and find your way around in five minutes.

Stackbar needs an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 26 or later.

Install

With Homebrew:

brew install --cask navbytes/tap/stackbar

Or without it:

curl -fsSL https://stackbar.app/install.sh | bash

You can also download the notarized app from the download page. Each way puts Stackbar.app in /Applications and stackbarctl on your PATH. You don’t need Xcode: store plugins come prebuilt.

The first run

The Welcome window asks two things:

  • Your hotkey. It starts as ⌃⌥Space. Most people coming from Raycast or Alfred choose Use ⌘Space. Spotlight keeps ⌘Space until you turn its shortcut off, so Stackbar shows a button that opens the right place in System Settings. Until then, ⌃⌥Space keeps working.
  • Crash reports. Off unless you turn them on. See Privacy.

Applications, Calculator and File Search are already installed and approved, so the palette finds apps, files and sums straight away. Other features ask macOS for a permission the first time you use them; Permissions lists which and why.

Coming from Spotlight

If Stackbar takes ⌘Space, Spotlight is still there: give it another shortcut instead of turning it off, such as ⌥⌘Space (System Settings › Keyboard › Keyboard Shortcuts › Spotlight). That keeps what only Spotlight does: Mail, Messages and Notes content, live answers like flights and sports, and its ⌘3 Actions and ⌘4 Clipboard views.

What carries over without setup: apps, files (including iCloud Drive and Dropbox), sums and unit conversions. Clipboard History (⌘⇧V), Snippets and Windows are in the Store and do more than Spotlight’s versions.

Where things are

  • The palette: your hotkey. Type to search; see The palette.
  • The menu bar: each plugin with a menu bar item shows it there. Click it for its panel.
  • Settings: from the Stackbar menu (⌘,). General holds the hotkey and moving to another Mac; Commands holds aliases and hotkeys; Store holds plugins and updates.
  • Widgets: plugins with a widget show up in the macOS widget gallery under Stackbar.

Next