I replaced MacOS spotlight with my own app switcher

I got tired of the MacOS spotlight taking over my system resources with it's godforsaken mds_stores process – which basically decides it wants to index every single file on my computer, so i disabled it with sudo mdutil -a -i off and then built my own app launcher. Having done a bit of reasearch I went with this really lightweight thing called Hammerspoon, which i now regret (wish I'd just built it in rust), but it does work (might rebuild later if I can be bothered).

Two hours and a Lua file

I called it Mac Apps Resource Vergüten (MARV). https://github.com/anthonyfrisby/marv

Programmed it to launch on F3 press. Press F3, a popup appears. Type a name, hit Enter, the app launches. Press Escape to close. That's the entire interaction. No MDS worker grinding your disk. No CPU spikes. No mysterious re-indexing after every update. Just a text field and a list of apps.

It looks pretty nice, too

I wanted it to feel like it belonged on macOS, not like some developer utility cobbled together from terminal commands. So the UI is a proper glassmorphic popup — backdrop blur, rounded corners, follows your system dark/light mode. There's a retro Apple logo at the top because why not. It's got that old-school Mac charm that Apple themselves seem to have forgotten about.

The whole thing is an HTML webview rendered by Hammerspoon, which means the UI is just HTML and CSS. Want to change the colours? Edit the CSS. Want a different logo? Swap the image. It's your app launcher — make it yours.

It's on GitHub

I've open-sourced it. The repo is up, the README has installation instructions, and the whole setup takes about two minutes.

Beyond app launching, there's a commands.json where you can wire up system commands — switching desktops, locking your screen, media controls, volume. And because it's Hammerspoon under the hood, you can add literally any action type you want. Window tiling, shell scripts, keyboard shortcuts — if Hammerspoon can do it, Command Station can trigger it – still tho gonna rebuild in rust, I don't like this hammerspoon business.

https://github.com/anthonyfrisby/marv