Zen Application 
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Slack Application 
Claude Application 
Free, and actually yours
No licence key, no trial timer, no subscription, no account. MIT-licensed on GitHub — read it, fork it, ship your own.
free · open source · native · keyboard-first · macos
The command palette
with claws.
Summon, aim, pounce. Apps, commands, files, clipboard, and the useful little things — one hotkey away. Free and open source, with no account to make.
- Free
- Open source · MIT
- No account, no telemetry
- macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon
⌘ space to done
Thought to action, before the thought leaves.
Summon it, type what you mean, and get back to the work. No dashboard. No ceremony.
install standalone with homebrew
$ brew install nebelhaus/tap/pounce Just pounce
The whole rice One brew, nothing else: a prebuilt Pounce.app that opens straight away, no compile step. No Nix and no other nebelhaus changes — then brew services start pounce keeps ⌘Space ready.
Pounce is included and wired for you: daemon, ⌘Space, and permission survival all live in the rice.
Meet nebelhaus →one palette, whatever you need
Fast by instinct. Open by design.
A dozen built-in commands, a shelf of optional plugins, and an extension model that is nothing but files — a native launcher when you want one, a tiny dmenu-style building block when you do not.
Apps + actions, one list
Fuzzy-find every installed app and your own commands together. Type saf, get Safari, hit Return. The hotkey is registered in-process, so the window is already there.
Math, units, time zones
Type 2*847, 72 f in c, or 14:00 utc in pst and the answer pins to the top row — Return copies it. Currency conversion rides along, cached so it still answers offline.
Every command is a file
A shell script in one folder IS a palette command. No plugin API, no extension store, no manifest, no restart — it is there on the next summon.
Clipboard history built in
Search your recent copies in a two-pane view, keep password apps out by bundle id, and optionally paste straight back into the app you left.
Find it before Finder does
Live search over the Spotlight index as you type. Return opens, ⌘Return reveals in Finder, ⌥Return copies the path.
The useful little things
Emoji, screenshots, camera, force quit, ports, brew services, lock screen — plus every System Settings pane by name, so "Displays" goes straight there.
A ⌘Tab that means windows
Turn on the MRU window switcher and ⌘⇥ walks your actual windows, newest first, with type-to-filter — not one icon per app. AeroSpace workspaces come along if you run it.
Learns what you reach for
Fuzzy match quality, frecency on a 72-hour half-life, and a boost for freshly installed apps put the answer you meant on the first row.
A shelf, not a store
Docker, Tailscale, GitHub, Spotify, SSH hosts, Bluetooth, audio devices, caffeinate — off by default, on in one line, and every one is still just a script.
A native picker for anything
pounce -p "Pick:" turns any list on stdin into a native picker. dmenu ergonomics in a real Swift window, callable from any script you already have.
drag, swipe, or use the arrows
Make the command you wish existed.
A name, a description, an SF Symbol, and a shell script. Put the file in ~/.config/pounce/commands and it appears on the next summon — no rebuild, no reload, no API to learn. Nothing is gated behind a paid tier, because there isn't one.