Use Stackbar
The palette
Search apps, files, sums and every plugin's commands from one hotkey, and make it yours with aliases, hotkeys and favourites.
Press your hotkey. Before you type, it shows Favorites, Recent and Commands. As you type, results come in sections: Applications, Files, Calculator and others that plugins add, then the matching commands, then plugins from the Store you haven’t installed yet. Press Return to run the selected result, Esc to go back or close.
Keys
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| ↑ ↓ | Move the selection |
| Return | Run the selected result |
| ⌘Return | The second action, when there is one (shown in the bar at the bottom) |
| ⌘K | Every action for the selection, with its own search |
| ⌘1 … ⌘9 | Run the first nine results |
| ⌘⇧F | Add the selection to Favorites, or take it off |
| Esc | Close ⌘K, go back a step, then close |
If you close the palette and open it again within a minute, it comes back where you were. After that it starts fresh.
Aliases and hotkeys
Settings › Commands lists every command. Give one an alias (type gh for
GitHub search, say) or a hotkey of its own that runs it without opening the
palette. You can also press ⌘K on a command and choose Set Alias and Hotkey…
What it searches
- Applications (plugin): apps and System Settings panes.
- File Search (plugin): files and folders by name, from Spotlight’s index.
- Calculator (plugin): sums, units, currency and time zones, such as
12 * 12,5 km in miles,100 usd in euror5pm london in tokyo. - Every installed plugin’s commands. Clipboard History, Snippets, Quicklinks, Windows, Emoji, System Commands and the rest add their own. Some take arguments, which the palette asks for after you pick them.
When nothing matches, fallback commands at the bottom offer to search the web with what you typed (Quicklinks adds these).
Turning parts off
Each plugin can be turned off on its page in Settings. To hide a single command, press ⌘K on it and choose Disable Command.
Outside the palette
Plugin commands also show in Spotlight’s results, and Shortcuts has a Run Stackbar Command action that takes any of them.
A Hyper key
Many Raycast and Hammerspoon users turn Caps Lock into a Hyper key that presses ⌃⌥⇧⌘ at once, so every shortcut on it is free. Stackbar doesn’t remap Caps Lock itself, but its hotkeys take all four modifiers, so a Hyper key from Karabiner-Elements works with every command hotkey and the palette’s own. In Karabiner, add the “Change caps_lock to command+control+option+shift” rule from its complex modifications, then press Caps Lock with a key in Settings › Commands when you record a hotkey.
Hotkeys can use letters, digits, punctuation (-, ., / and the rest of a
US keyboard’s), space, F1 to F12, the arrows, Return, Tab, Escape and Delete.
That covers a Rectangle-style window keymap such as ⌃⌥← and ⌃⌥→ for halves.