Blog
Notes from the launcher
Product updates, deep dives into keyboard-first workflows, and the occasional rant about Spotlight. Written by the CmdSpace team.
A keyboard-only macOS terminal launcher workflow
If you spend your day in iTerm, Ghostty, or Terminal.app, the ergonomic gap between "I need a terminal" and "I am typing into one" matters more than for any other app. Three seconds of friction per terminal-open, ten times a day, is 30 sec…
macOS Spotlight tips and tricks that still work in Tahoe 26
Spotlight has more capability than most users discover. Apple ships features into Spotlight every year, retires others quietly, and rarely documents the differences. By 2026, the result is a search bar where half the useful tricks are folk…
Searching files from the command line on macOS: mdfind, fd, and friends
Finder's search is slow. Spotlight's is noisy. When you actually need to find a file on macOS — by name, by content, by metadata — the command line is faster and more honest. This post walks through every tool worth knowing in 2026, with t…
The macOS dictionary shortcut you've been missing
There is a shortcut built into macOS, present since at least Snow Leopard, that most users never discover. It works in nearly every app that renders text. It calls up a dictionary card, Wikipedia stub, and Siri Suggestion in one keystroke.…
A keyboard-only macOS dev setup that survives every Tahoe update
Every macOS update is a small earthquake for developer machines. Spotlight forgets your exclusions. Some shortcut you relied on stops working. A signed launcher you trusted needs a fresh permission grant. The setup you spent a weekend tuni…
macOS clipboard history options in 2026: Maccy, Paste, Clipy, and built-in
macOS has had a system clipboard since 1984. It still holds exactly one item. Copy something, copy something else, the first thing is gone. For everyone except the lightest users this is a problem they hit dozens of times a day — paste the…
macOS apps with zero telemetry: a verified 2026 list
Most macOS apps phone home in some way. App opens, button clicks, crash reports, "anonymous usage analytics," feature gates that check a license server — all of it shows up as network traffic that 99% of users will never notice. For the 1%…
The lsof port cheatsheet for macOS developers
lsof is the standard tool for answering "what is using this port" on macOS. It is also one of the most cryptic command-line tools you will use this week. The man page is 300 lines of options, most of which you will never touch. This post i…
The 2026 list of local-first macOS apps that respect your machine
"Local-first" went from a niche academic term to a buyer's filter in three short years. Inkandswitch published the original essay in 2019 laying out the seven properties (no spinners, multi-device, network-optional, longevity, privacy, use…
Kill a process by port on macOS: every method, ranked
Every developer on macOS hits this at least weekly: "port 3000 is already in use." Maybe it is a Next.js dev server from a tab you closed, maybe a Docker container, maybe yesterday's experiment whose process you forgot. The fix is always t…
A day in a keyboard-first macOS workflow
This post is a literal walk-through of one day at a keyboard-first Mac. Not a list of tools, not a configuration guide — a play-by-play of how a person who has internalized keyboard shortcuts and a launcher actually moves through a workday…
Inline calculator on macOS: every option from Spotlight to CmdSpace
Every macOS user needs an inline calculator. Quick math, unit conversion, currency conversion, percentage of a number — the question is not whether you want one but which surface is fastest. There are at least six credible options on macOS…