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…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
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 lot smoother than I expected. I was able to use Objective-C++ to interface with most macOS native APIs, and a bit of Swift (through C FFI) where that wasn't enough. Thanks to that, Vicinae has a fully "liquid glass" look by default! The main thing that required real thought was permissions. macOS gates a lot behind TCC, and the trickiest one is Full Disk Access: without it, file search (through Spotlight) will silently omit a lot of user protected files. FDA remains fully optional though, users that don't want to use Vicinae for file search don't need to grant it (although extensions may need it as well, such as for accessing Apple Notes) Qt/QML worked pretty much as expected on macOS, with no notable issues. Even my custom shaders get compiled to Metal automatically, without configuring anything. And the bundle, once trimmed, ended up very small: 24MB compressed in a .dmg, with all the Qt libraries included! On the performance side I'm also extremely satisfied, it feels very snappy. It's also very lightweight when it comes to RAM usage. Around ~100MB if we exclude the node process required to run third party extensions (technically optional, as none of the core features rely on it). Definitely a breath of fresh air when we see what happened to Raycast V2 :-) Had a lot of fun porting this, and it reinforced my love for Qt even more. Vicinae is fully open source (GPLv3). Happy to answer questions about the port!
Does the same job
all alternatives →
- VVVmctl/Vmcli – Easily Run Linux VMs on M1 Macs2021 · github.com · ▲198
- SFServus for Mac and Dropbox2012 · servus.io · ▲95
I've built a thing! A few months back someone (not me) posted my Mac app Droplings to HN. It was incredibly rough around the edges back then, and in alpha. Well, it's finished now and sparkles like crazy. Please take a look! :)
- FCFfscreencast – CLI-based screencasts for OS X, Linux, BSD2017 · github.com · ▲76
- AOAurion OS, A 1.8MB OS with a browser, try it live (C/x86 ASM)Apr 2026 · aurionos.vercel.app · ▲5
I posted Aurion OS a few weeks ago on HN. Since then, the OS has gone from Beta to v1.0 Release with a lot of improvements: Blaze Browser: HTML/CSS/JS rendering with tabs and a developer console (local only, no full http/https support for now) Installer with user account setup and app selection Multi-resolution support (800x600 to 2560x1440, I plan to add 4096x2160 pixels in next versions) Unix-style luka@aurion prompt Serbian keyboard layout Python interpreter and Make build system 50+ terminal commands Window manager improvements and bug fixes 1.8MB ISO (entire OS including…
More dev tools this month
the category →
Open-source GTM skills for technical founders
Dev tools · 29d ago · gtmcofounder.com
OpenTrailPaper is open-source bike computer firmware for the LilyGO T5S3 4.7" E-Paper PRO. It supports offline maps, GPX routes, FIT recording and Bluetooth sensors.
Dev tools · 1d ago · opentrailpaper.com
Launched alongside, July 2026
the whole month →- IR
I might be the only SRE on Earth with his own bowling center. It's a more in-depth gig than you'd think. My family and I bought an abandoned 8-lane bowling center in the rural mid-west. In our small town there weren't many recreation options for families. You've heard of a food desert? This is an R&R desert. It had been abandoned for a good reason. The roof leaks, the electrical system was constantly surging, and my 70-year-old bowling equipment (still) doesn't work perfectly. The system that keeps your score is particularly interesting to me. It's the thing you watch during your game, but…
Life & fun · Jul 2026
- EElevators▲1,680
Life & fun · Jul 2026 · john.fun
- 1W18 Words▲1,160
Life & fun · Jul 2026 · 18words.com
- BA
Over the past few months, our team has been building more and more slidedecks using web frontend technologies with coding harnesses like Claude Code, but a common complaint is to make even small edits we need to edit the code either manually or via the harness. To avoid this loop, I ended up creating Bento, a single HTML file with everything you need in a slide tool including animations and shared editing. There's no install or cloud login, everything works offline. The default deck is around 560 KB and it doesn't need to fetch anything once you got it. Open it in a browser and then you can…
Dev tools · Jul 2026 · bento.page
- GG
A few days ago I found myself trying out GLM 5.2 and was really positively impressed. The capabilities and security I was getting from this LLM are similar to those I've gotten from models like Claude or GPT, and this really surprised me. But then I thought, "I wonder how it would work on a normal computer like mine," and above all, "I wonder if it would work without going into OOM on a computer like mine." So I started working with the help of agents to test this possibility. I started converting the model to int4, understanding MTP usage, and if possible implementing DSA for long context.…
AI · Jul 2026 · github.com
