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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Vicinae – open-source, Raycast-compatible command palette, now on macOS

10 months ago I posted on HN to announce the initial release of Vicinae, an "everything" command palette compatible with the Raycast extension ecosystem, only available on Linux. Today, after months of work, I'm finally releasing the first macOS version of Vicinae, with full feature parity with the Linux version! From a technical standpoint, it is still a Qt/C++ app with a Node.js powered extension runtime (like Raycast). Something as deeply system-integrated requires calling a lot of native APIs, and when I started the port I wasn't quite sure how easy it would be. Turns out it went a…

Vicinae is an open-source command palette for desktop that works with the Raycast extension ecosystem. Available on both Linux and macOS, it functions as a focused launcher built with Qt/C++ and a Node.js extension… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    Hi HN! I’ve always been a fan of application launchers, and I was impressed by the approach the Raycast team took — especially their extension system. About six months ago I started building something similar for Linux, aiming to integrate deeply at the OS level and give extensions a lot of power. Vicinae is written in C++ with Qt Widgets. I chose Widgets over QML for more imperative control of the UI, especially around extension handling. So far that’s worked well — modern C++ is great. To support my goals I built a number of custom widgets, including a fully virtualized list that can…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hey HN! I'm a huge fan of Raycast, but as a Linux user, I was always disappointed it wasn't available on my main OS. This summer, I decided to just build it myself. This project has the goal of being interoperable with Raycast itself, including a majority of the extensions. It's built with Tauri and Rust on the backend, with a Svelte frontend. The biggest challenge was getting it to run existing Raycast extensions, which required building a custom React renderer as well as making a custom API. I also wrote a quick post, which I hope to expand on in the future, about this project. You can…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Sol▲173

    Open source macOS command palette

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4
    Avvvatars▲473

    Open source React unique UI avatar library

    2022 · avvvatars.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    SuperCmd▲113

    Open source alternative to Raycast Pro

    Apr 2026 · supercmd.sh · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hi HN community, I’m Zach, founder and CEO of Warp, and am excited to show you Warp, a fast Rust-based terminal that’s easy to use and built for teams. As of today, Warp is in public beta and any Mac user can download it. It works with bash, zsh, and fish. The terminal’s teletype-like interface has made it hard for the CLI to thrive. After 20 years of programming, I still find it hard to copy a command’s output; I always forget how to use `tar`; and I always have to relearn how to move my cursor. To fix fundamental accessibility issues, I believe we need to start innovating on the terminal,…

    2022 · warp.dev · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Create your own Mac apps by chatting with AI

    Jul 2026 · glaze.app · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Supercharged productivity with shareable custom extensions

    2021 · raycast.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Flox▲375

    Hey Everyone! Ron here, part of the NixOS Foundation and building Flox. Just coming out of this years NixCon and pretty excited to show hn below :) As of today, NVIDIA officially recognizes Canonical, SUSE, CIQ, and Nix—via Flox—as supported distributors for CUDA. Full blog - https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/developers-can-now-get-cud... This is a huge win for the Nix community. For years, CUDA on Nix was possible but painful—builds could take hours, and redistributing prebuilt binaries was blocked by NVIDIA's licensing requirements. NVIDIA's growing engagement with key…

    2024 · flox.dev · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Not sure if I would post this for the last day of #marchintosh OR wait for tomorrow the 1st of April. Both apply equally. Anyway, here's a pet project of mine, I made it as a glued on for another pet project of mine, but it developed a life of it's own now and can soar skyward toward success, fame, and glory.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    We’ve been working on Vaev, a minimal web browser engine built from scratch. It supports HTML/XHTML, the CSS cascade, @page rules for pagination, and print-to-PDF rendering. It even handles calc(), var(), and percentage units—and yes, it renders Google.com (mostly). This is an experimental project focused on learning and exploration. Networking is basic (http:// and file:// only), and grid layouts aren’t supported yet, but we’re making progress fast. We’d love your thoughts and feedback.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    I've long wanted to harness QEMU/KVM for my desktop virtual machines, but I'm befuddled by virt-manager's lack of support for working NVIDIA 3D acceleration, dogmatic embrace of ugly XML, and the puzzling UI decision of having to click what seems like 15 buttons to attach an ISO to a VM image. When I further learned that NVIDIA's broken 3D acceleration is the fault of libvirt as opposed to QEMU's virtio driver, I had an idea... Behold, vm-curator! A fast and friendly VM management TUI written in Rust. You can create, configure, organize, and manage VMs directly with QEMU. No libvert. No…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Demo: https://dustinbrett.com Hey HN! I've been building my passion project daedalOS for over 4 years now. The original idea was to give visitors to my website the experience as if they had remotely connected to my personal machine. To do this I decided I would attempt to recreate as much of the functionality as possible. My hope is to keep working on this project for the rest of my life and continue to evolve it's capabilities as technologies progress. Thanks for checking it out!

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A set of utilities (vmcli + vmctl) for macOS Virtualization.framework - gyf304/vmcli

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    Cai▲179

    Hi HN, Cai runs actions on your selection via ⌥C, pick an action (AI, shell, GitHub issue, Linear ticket), done. Bundled local model (MLX Community), create custom actions with prompts, scripts and more. Free, MIT. Built after my Raycast extension sat in review queue for 3+ months. Wanted no typing, no app switching, no cloud. Repo: https://github.com/cai-layer/cai Demo: https://youtu.be/LH2MYNQ_wsk

    Apr 2026 · getcai.app · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    Arkestra▲136

    Create, connect and perform realtime video (macOS)

    2024 · arkestra.app · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    RayThis▲178

    Generate pretty code snippets right out of VSCode

    2021 · marketplace.visualstudio.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    A fully interactive, Mac-like experience directly in browser

    Nov 2025 · hargunpreet.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    agentOS▲148

    Hey HN – we’re sharing a tiny extension to BARE called VBARE that we’ve been using extensively to make schema evolution much cleaner & simpler. After our Protobuf schemas became a cluttered after numerous major changes, we evaluated many alternatives for better schema evolution - Cap'n Proto, FlatBuffers, Borsh, etc. - but none seemed that they’d make a noticable improvement. VBARE takes a different approach: it's a tiny extension to BARE that adds version headers and explicit migration functions between schema versions. This allows you to handle complex changes (like splitting a "name"…

    Jul 2026 · rivet.dev · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Hey all! I've been using this stack personally for a while now and decided to automate it a bit by turning it into a template I can reuse. Hope others might find it helpful!

    2025 · bhvr.dev · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hi HN, I’m Mike, the founder and creator of Wave, a cross-platform open-source terminal that supports inline rendering, modern UI, and persistent sessions. I love the command line; I’ve been using it for over 25 years, starting with a Linux box I made with spare parts in my college dorm room. But while other devtools have been modernized, the terminal has been stuck, with the same basic functionality for over 40-years. What if your command line terminal could display more than just text? That’s crazy right (I can hear the screams of thousands of graybeard sysadmins). Not all the time, but…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    I've been building open-source tools in the video/multimedia space for 10+ years. Finally shipped the commercial product I always wanted to exist — Video Commander, a desktop app that consolidates FFmpeg, ffprobe, MediaInfo, VMAF and more into a single workspace where you can inspect, encode and analyze video. Built with Tauri + Rust backend, React frontend. FFmpeg and VMAF. Not a cool AI/LLM project, just a tool I've been heads-down building over the last six months. Happy to answer any questions!

    Apr 2026 · video-commander.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    I’ve been experimenting with Rust lately and wanted a project that would help me explore some of its lower-level and performance-oriented features. Inspired by Sebastian Lague’s videos, I decided to implement my own ray tracer from scratch. The initial goal was just to render a simple 3D scene in the browser at a reasonable frame rate. It evolved into a small renderer that can: • Run locally or on the web using wgpu and WebAssembly • Perform mesh rendering with a Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) for acceleration • Simulate both direct and indirect illumination for photorealistic results • Be…

    Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24
    daedalOS▲106

    Desktop environment in the browser

    2022 · dustinbrett.com · its alternatives →

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