Live data from Hacker News

Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

github.com

41–50 of 57 posts

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small "s" sun. Not our Sun.

Commonly known as a star. (But now I wonder: is there a difference between stars and suns?)

My understanding is that a star is a star regardless of what is or isn't in orbit.

A sun, however, needs to have planets to be a sun.

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#42
post #15

Good to see something like this, don't forget there is already an open source alternative (pre-existing) for Alfred and Raycast. It's called Quicksilver - https://qsapp.com

We are working on revamping Quicksilver after a period of relative dormancy; I'm new to the project, but a long-time user. We've made several releases over the last few months -- some new features I'm excited for include support for scripting in JXA (instead of just AppleScript), and I'm working on Swift support in the plugin template for those who (like me) don't know ObjC but want to build a plugin. Thanks for the…

I used to love QS so much, and I'm very happy that development has commenced again! With the switch to M1, I've switched to Raycast, as QS wasn't M1 native at the time. Which is nice, but I really prefer the Object → Verb [→ Target] grammar of Quicksilver. I'll go and install QS again soon to check out what's new. Thank you for your work (please tell the rest of the team as well)!

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#43
post #41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commonly known as a star. (But now I wonder: is there a difference between stars and suns?)

My understanding is that a star is a star regardless of what is or isn't in orbit. A sun, however, needs to have planets to be a sun.

I searched if there are "free-floating" stars that don't have any planets in their field of gravity, and results essentially say "not since the early days of the galaxy". So nowadays all/most/the overwhelming majority of stars are suns. Very interesting!

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#44

Hey HackerNews, I'm the creator of Sol. Here are some answers to your questions: - Why Sol? I started using Raycast, and it's nice, but found it cumbersome, too many features tackled on top of each other with even more cumbersome navigation. I'm a ruthless simplifier and I wanted a similar yet I-don't-want-to-configure-you tool. I also believe that VC money backed tools face the though reality of unrealistic ROI at s…

Does it have calculator functionality?

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#45
post #9

Something fishy with the dependency graph on this… How is this a dependency of peoples webdev school work?

Probably because students don’t know any better. The instructor was probably teaching them how to “npm install” and uses “sol” as an example. If you check the package.lock file it’s listed in there for each of those projects.

yeah, Github uses that package.lock to walk the dependency tree. Seems like an easy way to get your project hoisted.

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#46
Sol is nice and then again it seems young and a bit lacking.

File search https://github.com/ospfranco/sol/issues/45 or opening files / apps in finder is not yet possible.

Did not understand how to alter search engine.

Window manager does not allow to use screen quarters.

Clearly this has huge potential. Maybe more developers will join the effort.

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#47

The “launcher” space on MacOS is so vibrant (see threads on Quicksilver, et al.). When I took a job at a Windows shop, I was shocked how poor the market is for similar tools. It really made me appreciate the Mac indie dev market. I (jokingly) spam my Windows colleagues on a private slack channel whenever unique apps appear, such as: https://retina.studio/textbuddy/ https://cleanshot.com/ https://reeder.app/ (No affil…

I shared the exact same sentiment when I transitioned to Windows after a long period of only using macOS. A few nice candidates I found include Wox [1], Keypirinha [2], and ueli [3].

I eventually began building a C# launcher myself and over time it has become my daily driver - feel free to check it out at https://github.com/dkgv/pinpoint.

[1] https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox

[2] https://keypirinha.com/

[3] https://github.com/oliverschwendener/ueli

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#48
post #44

Hey HackerNews, I'm the creator of Sol. Here are some answers to your questions: - Why Sol? I started using Raycast, and it's nice, but found it cumbersome, too many features tackled on top of each other with even more cumbersome navigation. I'm a ruthless simplifier and I wanted a similar yet I-don't-want-to-configure-you tool. I also believe that VC money backed tools face the though reality of unrealistic ROI at s…

Does it have calculator functionality?

It does. Might be a basic one, I suspect it's just sending your input to JS's eval function, but it gets the job done.

EDIT: I said it looks like JS eval because I put in `sqrt` and it showed me something like `function sqrt() { [native code] }`

When I tried to input some actual JS code it didn't do anything. I thought it might make for a basic REPL but no luck.

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#49

The “launcher” space on MacOS is so vibrant (see threads on Quicksilver, et al.). When I took a job at a Windows shop, I was shocked how poor the market is for similar tools. It really made me appreciate the Mac indie dev market. I (jokingly) spam my Windows colleagues on a private slack channel whenever unique apps appear, such as: https://retina.studio/textbuddy/ https://cleanshot.com/ https://reeder.app/ (No affil…

I guess, the MacOS native Spotlight influenced the growth of more indie “launchers”. Especially, Spotlight being quite limited customization wise.

I personally lately leaning towards niche launchers like:

* https://blipnotes.app for note taking;

* https://shortcat.app for “clicking” interface without a mouse;

* https://dashlook.app for searching git repositories/pull requests (disclaimer: I am the creator).

It just provides better experience compared to Alfred’s community plugins (usually not maintainted).

The problem with separate apps though, is that you need to remember dedicated shortcuts for each of them. On the other hand I had the same experience with Alfred, only that you need to remember specific command/keyword.

If anyone knows more niche “launchers”, I would be very interested to learn about them.

Re: Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

#50
post #49

The “launcher” space on MacOS is so vibrant (see threads on Quicksilver, et al.). When I took a job at a Windows shop, I was shocked how poor the market is for similar tools. It really made me appreciate the Mac indie dev market. I (jokingly) spam my Windows colleagues on a private slack channel whenever unique apps appear, such as: https://retina.studio/textbuddy/ https://cleanshot.com/ https://reeder.app/ (No affil…

I guess, the MacOS native Spotlight influenced the growth of more indie “launchers”. Especially, Spotlight being quite limited customization wise. I personally lately leaning towards niche launchers like: * https://blipnotes.app for note taking; * https://shortcat.app for “clicking” interface without a mouse; * https://dashlook.app for searching git repositories/pull requests (disclaimer: I am the creator). It just p…

LaunchBar is the original of this style of launcher including using cmd-space, fuzzy search of apps and files, calculator and more actions. LaunchBar originated on NeXT and thus pre-dates Mac OS X. I believe, I started using LaunchBar during the original OS X Beta. It highly influenced QuickSliver, Alfred and Spotlight, Keypirinha, PowerToys Run, etc.

You can still download the old versions all the way back to NeXT:

https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/download-legacy.html

I still using LaunchBar, but it's development has stagnated. I am evaluating the current version of Alfred. Alfred recently added the ability to send the selected file to the application of your choice, which is an essential feature for me.

Post reply on HN