^proj
Prefix
Only match things whose name starts with your query — no fuzzy noise, no middle-of-string surprises.
macOS 11+ / Apple Silicon & Intel / Native & signed
The launcher
that stays sharp
on a million files.
Native file & app search for macOS, built around one idea — you should never wait for an index.
One-time purchase · Free updates in 1.x · 30-day refund
global
Enter open
→ scope to folder
Live preview — try typing readme, ^src, or click a slot. ↑↓ to navigate, ↵ to open.
200ms
Cold start to first search
(snapshot load)
(snapshot load)
3–5s
Full walk of ~1M entries
(getattrlistbulk)
(getattrlistbulk)
<250ms
FS change to live result
(FSEvents incremental)
(FSEvents incremental)
~50MB
App disk footprint
(plus index snapshot)
(plus index snapshot)
01 — How it feels
Type four characters.
Get the thing you wanted.
readme$
Suffix
End-anchored. .md$, .pdf$, report$ — extensions and conventional endings at the end of a name.
'snappy
Exact substring
Disable fuzzy for this atom. Bring back a specific string, verbatim, in a sea of near-misses.
!test
Exclude
Subtract matches. Combine with others: ^src .rs$ !test — Rust source outside test files.
Atoms are whitespace-separated and combine with AND. Smart case —
case-insensitive unless you type uppercase. Unicode-aware normalization,
so café matches cafe.
02 — Features
Every decision, in service
of a faster keystroke.
01
Tier-based ranking.
Deterministic. Inspectable.
Exact name wins over prefix, which wins over word-boundary, which wins
over fuzzy. Package-manager caches (node_modules,
.bun/install, .m2/repository) are auto-demoted;
common user extensions (.pdf, .py,
.app) are auto-promoted. A launched-often fuzzy match
never beats an un-launched prefix match.
exactprefixword boundaryfuzzy
02
Frecency that
survives restarts.
Files and apps you launch more often rank higher within their tier.
State persists in SQLite alongside your settings. Open
~/Projects/bar ten times today and it's at the top
tomorrow — until your habits change.
03
Ten quick-launch slots.
One keystroke each.
Assign ten apps to ⌥1 through ⌥0. Drag to reorder. ⌘← / ⌘→ cycles through slots whose app is currently running — flip between open apps without reaching for the mouse. Modifiers are independently configurable.
⌥
+
1234567890
04
Folder scope
with a breadcrumb.
Hit → on a folder to scope in; ← backs out.
A 50-level breadcrumb remembers the query at each level, so you
can drill down and pop back without re-typing. Hidden-file
visibility is per-scope — ~/.config settings stay
hidden at home, but appear once you explicitly scope into it.
~
›
Projects
›
snappy
›
src-tauri
05
Lives in the menu bar.
Summoned, never in the way.
Global hotkey — default ⌥ Space, configurable. The window hides itself the moment you open a result. Tray icon, autostart at login, and a conflict banner if you try to steal Spotlight's ⌘ Space before clearing it in System Settings.
06
Incremental.
No re-scan, ever.
Filesystem changes — including app installs and removals — reflect
within ~250ms via FSEvents. The index walker uses
getattrlistbulk to combine directory iteration and
stat() into a single syscall, so a full walk of
~1M entries finishes in 3–5 seconds. You never restart to
pick up a new file.
watching
03 — Under the hood
Not a database.
Not a daemon.
Snappy is a signed native macOS app built in Rust. It walks your
home directory with getattrlistbulk, serializes the index
with bincode, and serves matches from memory through a
tier-packed scoring function that fits five ranking signals into a
single 32-bit integer. A descending sort is O(N log N), strictly
lexicographic, end of story.
No background services. No cloud. No analytics. No re-indexing at 3 AM. When you're not summoning it, it's a small process in the menu bar watching FSEvents.
- Language
- Rust + React (Tauri)
- Walker
- getattrlistbulk, parallel
- Index
- in-memory, ~150-200 MB
snapshot on disk - Watcher
- notify + FSEvents
- Ranking
- packed u32, 5 signals
- Fuzzy
- nucleo (same as Helix)
- Persistence
- SQLite · settings JSON
- Network
- none
04 — Pricing
One price.
No subscription.
Snappy for macOS
$
29
once
50% off at checkout
with code LAUNCH50 · auto-applied · ends Jun 18, 2026.
- ✓ Perpetual license for the 1.x line
- ✓ Free updates within 1.x
- ✓ Use on every Mac you own
- ✓ 30-day money-back guarantee
- ✓ Signed & notarized — no Gatekeeper dance
Buy Snappy
Checkout by Stripe. You get a download link and license key by email.
Not on the Mac App Store? Snappy needs a global hotkey and full-disk access to index your home — two things App Store sandboxing rules out. So we sell it direct.
05 — Requirements
What you need.
- macOS
- 11 Big Sur or later
- Chip
- Apple Silicon or Intel
- Disk
- ~50 MB + ~150–200 MB index
- Permissions
- Full-disk access · Accessibility (hotkey)
- Network
- Not required
- Download
- Signed .dmg, aarch64 or x86_64
Still reading?