If you're taking feedback, I've been a >decade-long user of LaunchBar, and I've yet to find another launcher that handles my most common actions quite as well (except maybe Alfred):
1. I launch a ton of URLs directly from LaunchBar, and it's a killer feature for me to be able to start typing a URL (not intending to match anything) and as soon as I type a period, LaunchBar converts the search to a URL (and inserts 'https://' and '.com'). e.g., if I type "abc.", LaunchBar will expand to "https://abc.com" with the ".com" highlighted for replacement (and hitting Return will open the URL immediately). Right now, if I want to do the same with Tuna and my default mode is Fuzzy Mode, I believe I need to hit '"' to enter Text Mode, type the URL, hit Tab, then search for the "Open URL" action (which also won't recognize a "bare" URL without the scheme, so won't show up for, e.g., "abc.com") — but happy to be wrong! I think it'd be swell if it were possible to configure Tuna to, on '.', convert into text mode, automatically insert "https://" and ".com", and automatically pre-populate the "Open URL" action so I could just hit Return to confirm and launch
2. I use the inline calculator a lot, and really like the "auto math" switch when typing digits (and really like the carve-out for 1Password, where typing '1' will show 1Password in fuzzy search instead of switching to the calculator); switching to text mode automatically on numeric input would be really helpful to do the same
3. I have a few custom search templates in LaunchBar I use all the time (several different search engines), and I'm not sure if it's possible to set up something similar directly inside of Tuna yet without writing custom services or an extension
Obviously, this is just how I use LaunchBar, and may not fit in with your vision of Tuna, but figured it might be some helpful food for thought! Thanks for your work on this :)
5. Ejecting one or all volumes.
6. Instant Open to profit from setting the system to a short key repeat and being able to open an item by simply dwelling on the last character a little longer.
7. Sub-Search puts large collections like emojis, bookmarks, and music into second row so that selecting primary items like applications and actions stays fast.
8. Instant Send allows me to quickly open the current Finder selection with an app that is not the default viewer or editor.
At first I thought "ehhh, new conventions to learn, not so eager to do that", but by the end of the video you've convinced me there's something here worth learning. It seems very intuitive.
For what it's worth—as far as future extensions go—according to Raycast the things I did most in 2025 were:
- timers (ti, tab, enter hh:mm:ss values, return)
- dictionary (dw, tab, type word, return)
- inline calculator
- currency conversion
- focus sessions
- port manager
When I fired up Tuna, onboarding began and I had to restart to grant disk access. It didn't restart at first. I then started it manually, and onboarding didn't resume. I had to manually choose "show onboarding" from the menu bar.
I started teaching my daughters to use Alfred because my multiple attempts at staying native with Spotlight has failed despite its recent advancements.
I loved it, but eventually found that Raycasts approach of having predefined plugins for each use case is more performant , discoverable and usable.
Kinda like how the unix philosophy was beaten by integrated full-stack applications.
* since anything can be composed, everything must be in the same search index. This slows down the index, and means you need to sift through more irrelevant results.
Custom search query strings/results is important, too. I couldn’t tell how you support that from the marketing site.
Alfred has three main search prefixes, find, open and in. Find does titles, in does in-document search. It's pretty fast and live-updates as you type. Find/open is the weird part relative to Tuna, as you'd rather decide which action to take after filtering down search results.
Anyway, now that I'm on my Mac, I was able to compare them. Alfred's search seems to be several times faster than Tuna's search (based on when Tuna shows the UI with search results.)
Tuna also chokes on adding too many folders to search; the settings pane beachballs and the app can't be used, even after force quitting and restarted. If that's due to heavy indexing, maybe that could be decoupled from the UI so it could search the partial index in the meantime. Or back the user out of folder depth they selected if it's not going to perform.
Tuna also has some of the same missing items that Raycast has, that Alfred finds; I know Alfred also makes use of Spotlight's index, but they do something in addition to that.
The only sign of modernity noticed is leaving good old stuff behind:
> macOS 15 Sequoia or newer required
Great work.
As others have mentioned, a clear list of features would be useful.
Loved Quicksilver back in the day.
I resisted Raycast since it seemed like the Mac bloggers and podcasters were using it. But I finally gave in.
Now after giving Tuna a try, I realize what's been missing since Quicksilver: some whimsy; a Mac-assed[1] launcher. As capable as Raycast is, it has no personality; it’s just a tool. It's not fun to use.
Compared to the others, Tuna is fun to use. It looks right at home on the Mac.
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/mac-assed-mac-a...