9 ms·

Sol: Open-source Alfred/Raycast alternative for macOS

155 points by Destiner 4y ago

phildenhoff 4y ago
I’m excited to see this grow. Raycast has been a big boon to me and having an open source competitor is great to see. Have you considered making your plug-in API compatible with Raycast (if that’s possible)?
michaelmior 4y ago
I would love to see something like this take off. Spotlight is great, but there is other functionality in Alfred I quite like. However, I find Alfred kind of expensive. Never heard of Raycast, but this prompted me to check it out and I'm quite liking it so far.
- gkoberger 4y ago
  If you like Alfred, you'll love Raycast. Never had a product completely replace another one so easily.
  - radicaldreamer 4y ago
    What are the most useful things that you use that are in Raycast but not in Alfred (or better in Raycast)?
    - cuddlecake 4y ago
      If you connect raycast with your calendar, you can view your schedule from within raycast. If there is an upcoming meeting with a zoom/teams/<call app> link attached, you can join by pressing enter. Never had to look for a meeting link again. I'm not sure if Alfred has this as well, but nevertheless, i just love this feature
humbleferret 4y ago
Aside from being open source and not mining user data, what benefits does this provide over Alfred/Raycast?
- gingerlime 4y ago
  without using Sol, I would say that not mining user data is quite a big benefit. From the Raycast privacy policy: > We use Personal Data for the following purposes: > … > To analyze how you interact with our Service. Reason: For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can in our delivery of the Service to you (personal opinion: it doesn’t pass the smell test)
lagrange77 4y ago
Wow this is written with react-native?
gabereiser 4y ago
Something fishy with the dependency graph on this… How is this a dependency of peoples webdev school work?
- yagiznizipli 4y ago
  I did not understand what you mean. Can you elaborate?
- KMnO4 4y ago
  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.
  - gabereiser 4y ago
    yeah, Github uses that package.lock to walk the dependency tree. Seems like an easy way to get your project hoisted.
- jamesbvaughan 4y ago
  It seems like an issue with the way GitHub populates the dependency list. I believe all of those repos are actually dependent on the package named "sol" in NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/sol https://www.npmjs.com/package/sol
denysonique 4y ago
It would be nice to see this ported to Linux desktop.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
There is also https://www.scriptkit.com/ https://www.scriptkit.com/ by John Lindquist which has a great course to get started: https://egghead.io/courses/script-kit-showcase-for-optimizing-your-everyday-workflows-e20ceab4 https://egghead.io/courses/script-kit-showcase-for-optimizin...
- madetoshareqs 4y ago
  I use Hammerspoon https://www.hammerspoon.org/ https://www.hammerspoon.org/ What makes it particularly useful is the breadth of coverage of functionality of the API and integration with OS features.
  - tcoff91 4y ago
    Hammerspoon definitely is nice because of the fact that you are writing code so it’s very nice to work with. However, I feel like Keyboard Maestro is capable of much more powerful automation of interactions with GUI apps. Steps like Pause until image appears on screen, click on found image, etc… are super handy. The macro editor however leaves a lot to be desired when compared to writing scripts as code.
andy47 4y ago
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 https://qsapp.com
- madetoshareqs 4y ago
  Quicksilver is most excellent! I made this account to share it before I saw this comment. I have used it for a decade. I use it primarily as a launcher but it supports a usage model of select thing then select action to perform on the thing which makes it a versatile and powerful way to drive things by keyboard. It also has a plug-in system with integrations for other apps. I recommend the Yosemite theme. https://github.com/mikker/YosemiteDarkInterface-qsplugin https://github.com/mikker/YosemiteDarkInterface-qsplugin
- alwillis 4y ago
  I keep trying new launcher apps and I keep coming back to QuickSilver.
- ramenmeal 4y ago
  I remember first installing quicksilver years ago, and it really being a game changer. Probably 5 or so years ago (maybe more, yikes), I switched to spotlight after Apple improved it a bit. Every once in awhile I consider looking back though, mostly for the nostalgia.
  - jackthetab 4y ago
    Same here. I recently went to try it again, unfortunately, it kept crashing. Back to Spotlight it is... :-(
- n8henrie 4y ago
  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 shout-out!
wdb 4y ago
Wondering if it has a lower memory usage compared to Alfred
- skavi 4y ago
  I’m seeing a lot of JS in the source.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  I doubt it. Alfred is very well optimised across most metrics – memory, CPU, binary size, download size. This is Typescript which means it's likely to hit a limit quite far before where Alfred is.
jackthetab 4y ago
Where are the docs? There's nothing (obvious to me) in the repo. The official site is just the README.md. I installed it via brew; there's no man page. Bash can't find it. Spotlight found it and ran it...I guess. What am I missing?
- EricE 4y ago
  The author thinks he's being clever not providing docs. I hate it when people play games - and yes dev, you have failed.
stonewareslord 4y ago
Why is this called sol (sun) when the logo is a black hole? Am I missing something?
m1keil 4y ago
Installed via brew to try it out. Won't lunch. The process is running, but I just can't seem to make it pop up?
- EricE 4y ago
  Yup - an indication of how to trigger/what it would look like if successfully triggered might actually help with troubleshooting?
alsetmusic 4y ago
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://retina.studio/textbuddy/ https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/ https://reeder.app/ https://reeder.app/ (No affiliation. Only one is newish, but these were good examples of great Mac software.) Or any other number of slick tools.
- kramerger 4y ago
  Are you aware of the new Microsoft PowerToys? It includes a number of interesting tools and is open source. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/
- otherworldly 4y ago
  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 https://github.com/dkgv/pinpoint. [1] https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox [2] https://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/ [3] https://github.com/oliverschwendener/ueli https://github.com/oliverschwendener/ueli
- g1ntas 4y ago
  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 https://blipnotes.app for note taking; * https://shortcat.app https://shortcat.app for “clicking” interface without a mouse; * https://dashlook.app 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.
somada141 4y ago
I used Alfred for years and never thought I’d find a viable replacement for it but Raycast has completely replaced it for me in the past year. The ‘Schedule’ integration with the single-key to launch the video conference functionality is top notch. Other dev-targeting integrations like GitHub are also fantastic and unlike with Alfred I don’t have to use a dozen extensions with forgettable shorthand commands so unless the other shoe drops and Raycast ends up introducing some over the top subscription-based pricing model I don’t see me ever going back to Alfred
oscar_franco13 4y ago
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 some point, so I fully expect other tools to squeeze money out of you at some point. I develop Sol on my free time building the tool that I like, and it will not have any registration step or run analytics on you on any shape or form. - Where are the docs? it is not launching? You seem to have tried the app at the unfortunate time where I did some breaking changes and fixing some bugs (try option + space it should launch). Regarding docs there is none, and there will be none, if I need to explain how to use the app I have already failed. - Why is it called Sun and has a black hole logo? A black hole is a collapsed sun, do be a stickler. Have fun and enjoy. - Memory use Not more than chrome! BOOH YA! Hope you like the app and feel free to submit PRs!
- ihateolives 4y ago
  > - Why is it called Sun and has a black hole logo? > A black hole is a collapsed sun, do be a stickler. Have fun and enjoy. No. Sun can never become a black hole: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/why-the-sun-wont-become-a-black-hole https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/why-the-sun-...
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Small "s" sun. Not our Sun.
    - rspoerri 4y ago
      thats a star, our star is called sun
      - rspoerri 4y ago
        that might need some correction... Wikipedia states: The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. According to some articles on the web, other stars can be suns as well, if they contain a planetary system. In common language however "the sun" is typically our star. "a sun" might be other stars as well. I think most people dont understand and think about the difference and thus think a star is a sun.
sleepless 4y ago
Sol is nice and then again it seems young and a bit lacking. File search https://github.com/ospfranco/sol/issues/45 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.

155 points by Destiner 4y ago

I’m excited to see this grow. Raycast has been a big boon to me and having an open source competitor is great to see. Have you considered making your plug-in API compatible with Raycast (if that’s possible)?

michaelmior 4y ago

I would love to see something like this take off. Spotlight is great, but there is other functionality in Alfred I quite like. However, I find Alfred kind of expensive. Never heard of Raycast, but this prompted me to check it out and I'm quite liking it so far.

gkoberger 4y ago
If you like Alfred, you'll love Raycast. Never had a product completely replace another one so easily.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  What are the most useful things that you use that are in Raycast but not in Alfred (or better in Raycast)?
  - cuddlecake 4y ago
    If you connect raycast with your calendar, you can view your schedule from within raycast. If there is an upcoming meeting with a zoom/teams/<call app> link attached, you can join by pressing enter. Never had to look for a meeting link again. I'm not sure if Alfred has this as well, but nevertheless, i just love this feature

humbleferret 4y ago

Aside from being open source and not mining user data, what benefits does this provide over Alfred/Raycast?

gingerlime 4y ago
without using Sol, I would say that not mining user data is quite a big benefit. From the Raycast privacy policy: > We use Personal Data for the following purposes: > … > To analyze how you interact with our Service. Reason: For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can in our delivery of the Service to you (personal opinion: it doesn’t pass the smell test)

lagrange77 4y ago

Wow this is written with react-native?

gabereiser 4y ago

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

yagiznizipli 4y ago
I did not understand what you mean. Can you elaborate?
KMnO4 4y ago
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.
- gabereiser 4y ago
  yeah, Github uses that package.lock to walk the dependency tree. Seems like an easy way to get your project hoisted.
jamesbvaughan 4y ago
It seems like an issue with the way GitHub populates the dependency list. I believe all of those repos are actually dependent on the package named "sol" in NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/sol https://www.npmjs.com/package/sol

denysonique 4y ago

It would be nice to see this ported to Linux desktop.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

There is also https://www.scriptkit.com/ https://www.scriptkit.com/ by John Lindquist which has a great course to get started: https://egghead.io/courses/script-kit-showcase-for-optimizing-your-everyday-workflows-e20ceab4 https://egghead.io/courses/script-kit-showcase-for-optimizin...

madetoshareqs 4y ago
I use Hammerspoon https://www.hammerspoon.org/ https://www.hammerspoon.org/ What makes it particularly useful is the breadth of coverage of functionality of the API and integration with OS features.
- tcoff91 4y ago
  Hammerspoon definitely is nice because of the fact that you are writing code so it’s very nice to work with. However, I feel like Keyboard Maestro is capable of much more powerful automation of interactions with GUI apps. Steps like Pause until image appears on screen, click on found image, etc… are super handy. The macro editor however leaves a lot to be desired when compared to writing scripts as code.

andy47 4y ago

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 https://qsapp.com

madetoshareqs 4y ago
Quicksilver is most excellent! I made this account to share it before I saw this comment. I have used it for a decade. I use it primarily as a launcher but it supports a usage model of select thing then select action to perform on the thing which makes it a versatile and powerful way to drive things by keyboard. It also has a plug-in system with integrations for other apps. I recommend the Yosemite theme. https://github.com/mikker/YosemiteDarkInterface-qsplugin https://github.com/mikker/YosemiteDarkInterface-qsplugin
alwillis 4y ago
I keep trying new launcher apps and I keep coming back to QuickSilver.
ramenmeal 4y ago
I remember first installing quicksilver years ago, and it really being a game changer. Probably 5 or so years ago (maybe more, yikes), I switched to spotlight after Apple improved it a bit. Every once in awhile I consider looking back though, mostly for the nostalgia.
- jackthetab 4y ago
  Same here. I recently went to try it again, unfortunately, it kept crashing. Back to Spotlight it is... :-(
n8henrie 4y ago
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 shout-out!

wdb 4y ago

Wondering if it has a lower memory usage compared to Alfred

skavi 4y ago
I’m seeing a lot of JS in the source.
danpalmer 4y ago
I doubt it. Alfred is very well optimised across most metrics – memory, CPU, binary size, download size. This is Typescript which means it's likely to hit a limit quite far before where Alfred is.

jackthetab 4y ago

Where are the docs? There's nothing (obvious to me) in the repo. The official site is just the README.md. I installed it via brew; there's no man page. Bash can't find it. Spotlight found it and ran it...I guess. What am I missing?

EricE 4y ago
The author thinks he's being clever not providing docs. I hate it when people play games - and yes dev, you have failed.

stonewareslord 4y ago

Why is this called sol (sun) when the logo is a black hole? Am I missing something?

m1keil 4y ago

Installed via brew to try it out. Won't lunch. The process is running, but I just can't seem to make it pop up?

EricE 4y ago
Yup - an indication of how to trigger/what it would look like if successfully triggered might actually help with troubleshooting?

alsetmusic 4y ago

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://retina.studio/textbuddy/ https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/ https://reeder.app/ https://reeder.app/ (No affiliation. Only one is newish, but these were good examples of great Mac software.) Or any other number of slick tools.

kramerger 4y ago
Are you aware of the new Microsoft PowerToys? It includes a number of interesting tools and is open source. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/
otherworldly 4y ago
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 https://github.com/dkgv/pinpoint. [1] https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox [2] https://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/ [3] https://github.com/oliverschwendener/ueli https://github.com/oliverschwendener/ueli
g1ntas 4y ago
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 https://blipnotes.app for note taking; * https://shortcat.app https://shortcat.app for “clicking” interface without a mouse; * https://dashlook.app 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.

somada141 4y ago

I used Alfred for years and never thought I’d find a viable replacement for it but Raycast has completely replaced it for me in the past year. The ‘Schedule’ integration with the single-key to launch the video conference functionality is top notch. Other dev-targeting integrations like GitHub are also fantastic and unlike with Alfred I don’t have to use a dozen extensions with forgettable shorthand commands so unless the other shoe drops and Raycast ends up introducing some over the top subscription-based pricing model I don’t see me ever going back to Alfred

oscar_franco13 4y ago

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 some point, so I fully expect other tools to squeeze money out of you at some point. I develop Sol on my free time building the tool that I like, and it will not have any registration step or run analytics on you on any shape or form. - Where are the docs? it is not launching? You seem to have tried the app at the unfortunate time where I did some breaking changes and fixing some bugs (try option + space it should launch). Regarding docs there is none, and there will be none, if I need to explain how to use the app I have already failed. - Why is it called Sun and has a black hole logo? A black hole is a collapsed sun, do be a stickler. Have fun and enjoy. - Memory use Not more than chrome! BOOH YA! Hope you like the app and feel free to submit PRs!

ihateolives 4y ago
> - Why is it called Sun and has a black hole logo? > A black hole is a collapsed sun, do be a stickler. Have fun and enjoy. No. Sun can never become a black hole: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/why-the-sun-wont-become-a-black-hole https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/why-the-sun-...
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Small "s" sun. Not our Sun.
  - rspoerri 4y ago
    thats a star, our star is called sun
    - rspoerri 4y ago
      that might need some correction... Wikipedia states: The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. According to some articles on the web, other stars can be suns as well, if they contain a planetary system. In common language however "the sun" is typically our star. "a sun" might be other stars as well. I think most people dont understand and think about the difference and thus think a star is a sun.

sleepless 4y ago

Sol is nice and then again it seems young and a bit lacking. File search https://github.com/ospfranco/sol/issues/45 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.