pylogmon/istart

iStart is a small macOS app that brings a Windows style Start Menu and keyboard driven app launcher to the Mac. You press a global hotkey, a floating panel opens, you start typing the name of an app, then press Enter to launch it. The panel hides again when you press Escape or click outside it. It is built with SwiftUI and AppKit and is meant to feel native, with a frosted glass background and a Chinese and English interface. The global hotkey can be set to Command Space, Option Space, Control Space, or Command Option Space. The README notes that Command Space is the default Spotlight shortcut on macOS, so you may need to remove or change the Spotlight binding in System Settings before using it for iStart. Search matches an app by its name, its Bundle ID, its first letters, and by Chinese pinyin, so a user typing in Chinese pinyin or English will both find the right entry. The menu has a pinned grid where you can fix frequently used apps and reorder them by drag, a Recent list that fills in automatically as you launch things, and an All Apps view that shows every indexed app. Under Settings then Applications, you can add extra folders to the index, which the README suggests using for apps in the user's home directory and for Chrome installed PWAs. iStart can also register itself as a login item so it stays available in the background. The project requires macOS 26.0 or newer, an Xcode version that ships the macOS 26 SDK, and Swift 5.