Tuna — A Modern Native macOS Application Launcher

https://tunaformac.com/

Why This Matters

The macOS launcher category — Spotlight, Alfred, Raycast, LaunchBar, Quicksilver — has had remarkably little turnover. Alfred is decade-plus. Raycast won the last cycle by adding a plugin store and a subscription pricing model. Quicksilver, the OG, is still around as a beloved-but-stagnant freebie. Net result: if you want a modern, native, one-time-purchase launcher in 2026, the field is thin.
Tuna is a recent entry built entirely in native Swift, drawing explicit inspiration from Quicksilver. Version 0.73 (build 1425) just hit Homebrew cask. macOS 15+. Free tier with usage limits; $49 one-time unlock for Pro.

What It Actually Does

The headline feature is modal interaction — Tuna ships with four distinct interaction modes layered on the same launcher:
  • Fuzzy Mode — the standard "type a few characters, get matches" pattern Alfred and Raycast popularized.
  • Combo Mode — chain operations together (the "verb on noun" composition that made Quicksilver famous: pick a file → pick "compress" → pick a destination, all without a mouse).
  • Text Mode — for text-first inputs and snippet-style expansions.
  • Talk Mode — voice input as a first-class launcher modality.
Plus: native Swift (i.e., not Electron, not a webview-with-extras), extension architecture in the works (third-party extensions coming), and a freemium/one-time-purchase model rather than subscription.

Where It Fits in Our Workflow

The category is contested but the pricing model is the actual differentiator. Raycast's subscription has gradually moved its most interesting features behind the paywall; Alfred is still one-time-purchase but feels frozen. Tuna's bet is "modern + native + own-it-once."
For our context:
  1. Quicksilver-style verb-on-noun composition is the right mental model for working across a Pseudomonorepos tree — "open this child repo in Finder," "show this changelog in Marked," "encode this path and ship it to clipboard." Raycast can do these but slowly accreted the muscle; Tuna is starting from that primitive.
  2. Talk Mode is the wildcard. Most launchers have a voice afterthought; building it in as one of four primary modes is a different bet. Worth a real test against the "narrate a multi-step file operation while looking at a different window" use case.
Caveats: 0.73 means young. The "extensions coming soon" pitch means today the ecosystem is empty — if you depend on Raycast's plugin library, Tuna will feel sparse. macOS 15 floor cuts out anyone on older OS.
Compare against Raycast (huge plugin library, subscription), Alfred (stable, one-time, plugin ecosystem aging), and LaunchBar (also Quicksilver-descended, one-time, mature). Tuna's positioning is "Raycast's polish, Alfred's pricing model, Quicksilver's verb-on-noun soul."

Install

bash 
brew install --cask tuna
Free tier with usage limits; $49 one-time for Pro.
Source: https://tunaformac.com/