DockGrid

English · Русский

A lightweight app launcher, clipboard history and window manager for macOS — a replacement for Launchpad / the system "Apps" icon and for a clipboard manager, made for people who keep Spotlight turned off. It does not use the Spotlight index: the app list is read from disk every time the window opens.

The app interface and the installer messages are currently in Russian.

App grid	Clipboard history

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Daloshka/dockgrid/main/install.sh | sh

Requires macOS 14 or later (Apple Silicon or Intel); Xcode is not needed. The script downloads the prebuilt app from the latest release into ~/Applications/Apps.app, enables launch at login and starts it right away: Option+A opens the app grid, Cmd+Space opens the clipboard history. To update, run the same command again: it installs the latest release over the old one, keeping your settings and clipboard history. The script also disables the system Spotlight shortcut (Cmd+Space) and quits Maccy and Rectangle if they are running (their shortcuts clash with DockGrid); to skip that, run curl -fsSL … | DOCKGRID_KEEP_SPOTLIGHT=1 sh.

Uninstall:

launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/local.dockgrid
rm -rf ~/Applications/Apps.app ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.dockgrid.plist

Features

• App grid with search by name; arrow keys move around the grid, Enter launches, Esc closes.
• Pinned apps in a separate block at the top.
• Right-click an app: pin / unpin, show in Finder, hide from the list.
• Opens by clicking the Dock icon or with a hotkey (Option+A); doing it again hides the window.
• The process stays alive and the window is hidden; while hidden, the interface is unloaded and CPU use is close to zero.

Clipboard history

• Remembers copied text, files and images (up to 200 entries, pinned ones are never evicted); copying the same thing again moves the entry to the top.
• Opens with a hotkey (Cmd+Space by default): a searchable list on the left, a preview and entry details on the right.
• Text that looks like code (including JSON and SQL) is syntax-highlighted in the preview: keywords, strings, comments, numbers, types and calls; long lines scroll sideways instead of wrapping.
• If a copied image contains a QR code, its content is shown under the preview: an http(s) link opens on click, any text can be copied.
• Enter or click copies the entry back to the clipboard; Option+Enter copies and pastes (needs the Accessibility permission for Apps.app; it has to be granted again after a rebuild).
• Cmd+1…9 — quick select, Cmd+Backspace — delete, right-click — pin, delete, show the file in Finder.
• Entries that password managers mark as concealed (org.nspasteboard.ConcealedType and similar, plus the custom types of 1Password, KeeWeb and TypeIt4Me) are not stored.
• Storage: ~/Library/Application Support/DockGrid/clipboard (index.json, images/*.png, large texts in texts/*.txt), unencrypted, readable by the owner only.
• For large texts the preview and search cover the first 20,000 characters; the full text is copied.

Known limitations

• IME input (Japanese, Chinese, Korean): Enter and the arrow keys always act on the list, so confirming a composition in the search field does not work.
• Option+Enter pastes by sending the V key at its QWERTY position; on layouts such as Dvorak the paste will not work.

Window management

Hotkeys tile the focused window of any app — modelled on Rectangle, with the same default shortcuts:

Action	Shortcut	What it does
left-half, right-half	Ctrl+Option+← / →	left / right half; repeating cycles the width 1/2 → 2/3 → 1/3
top-half, bottom-half	Ctrl+Option+↑ / ↓	top / bottom half
top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right	Ctrl+Option+U / I / J / K	screen quarters
first-third, center-third, last-third	Ctrl+Option+D / F / G	thirds (split by height on a portrait display)
first-two-thirds, last-two-thirds	Ctrl+Option+E / T	two thirds
maximize	Ctrl+Option+Enter	fill the usable area (not full-screen mode)
maximize-height	Ctrl+Option+Shift+↑	full height, width unchanged
almost-maximize	unassigned	90% of the screen, centred
center	Ctrl+Option+C	centre without resizing
larger, smaller	Ctrl+Option+= / −	grow / shrink by 30 pt on each side
restore	Ctrl+Option+Backspace	bring back the frame the window had before tiling
next-display, prev-display	Ctrl+Option+Cmd+→ / ←	move to the adjacent display, keeping proportions

• Needs the Accessibility permission for Apps.app (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility): the prompt appears on the first shortcut press. After an update or a rebuild it has to be granted again: the app removes the stale entry on launch, so you only need to flip the toggle in the new prompt.
• Shortcuts are changed in the settings window or in hotkeys.txt (see "Hotkeys"); action = none disables an action.
• restore works while the window still sits where DockGrid put it; full-screen windows are left alone.
• Rectangle is quit during installation so shortcuts do not fire twice; turn off any other window manager with the same shortcuts yourself.

Building from source

Requires Xcode Command Line Tools (swiftc, iconutil) and macOS 14+.

./build.sh

The release archive used by install.sh is built with ./release.sh (a universal build/DockGrid.zip).

build.sh builds ~/Applications/Apps.app, draws the icon (icon.swift), signs the app ad hoc and registers the apps-launcher:// URL scheme. After the build, drag Apps.app to the Dock.

The script also removes what gets in the way of the hotkeys:

• disables the system Spotlight shortcut (Cmd+Space) — re-enable it in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Spotlight;
• quits Maccy if it is running (Maccy's launch at login is turned off in its own settings);
• quits Rectangle and turns off its launch-at-login setting — otherwise both would react to the same shortcut;
• ./build.sh --disable-indexing additionally turns off Spotlight indexing (sudo mdutil -a -i off; without the index, search in Finder and Mail stops working; revert with sudo mdutil -a -i on).

To leave everything untouched: DOCKGRID_KEEP_SPOTLIGHT=1 ./build.sh.

Hotkeys

The app registers its global shortcuts itself (Carbon RegisterEventHotKey): no third-party tools are needed, and the Accessibility permission is required only for window management and Option+Enter pasting. The easiest way to change them is the shortcuts window: the gear button in the app grid, Cmd+, in the open panel, or open apps-launcher://settings. Clicking a field records a new shortcut (Esc cancels), × clears it; a shortcut already used by another action is removed from that action. Changes apply immediately.

The window edits ~/.config/apps-folder/hotkeys.txt, which is created on first launch; actions it does not list yet (for example after an update) are appended to the end:

apps = alt+a
clipboard = cmd+space
left-half = ctrl+alt+left
…

Modifiers: cmd, alt, ctrl, shift; keys: letters, digits, space, tab, return, delete, arrows left/right/up/down, =, -, [, ], ,, ., /, f1–f12. The value none leaves an action without a shortcut. Manual edits to the file take effect after the app is restarted. Hotkeys work only while the process is running (see "Launch at login"). For scripts there is a URL scheme: open apps-launcher://toggle and open apps-launcher://clipboard.

Launch at login

The clipboard history is recorded and the hotkeys work only while the process is running. install.sh sets this up for you; after a manual build, make it start hidden at login with:

cp examples/local.dockgrid.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.dockgrid.plist

Settings

Files in ~/.config/apps-folder/, one app name per line, without .app:

File	Purpose
pinned.txt	apps pinned to the top, in line order
system.txt	which apps from /System/Applications to show (other system apps are hidden)
hidden.txt	which third-party apps to hide
hotkeys.txt	global keyboard shortcuts

Examples are in examples/. The list is built from /Applications, ~/Applications (including first-level subfolders), /System/Applications and Utilities.

How it works

• main.swift — the panel window, modes and switching; Launcher.swift — the app grid; Clipboard.swift — clipboard history (polls NSPasteboard.changeCount every 0.5 s); Highlight.swift — code detection and highlighting; QRCode.swift — reading QR codes from images; Hotkeys.swift — global hotkeys; Windows.swift — window management through the Accessibility API; Settings.swift — the shortcuts window.
• The window is an NSPanel with the nonactivatingPanel style: it receives the keyboard without waiting for the app to be activated.
• A Dock click arrives as a reopen event, a hotkey as a Carbon event; both lead to the same toggle().
• tools/winvis.swift — checks whether the window is visible on screen (for tests from the terminal).