rcmd - Re-imagined Command Tab

[alinpanaitiu]

Hi! I'm Alin Panaitiu, the developer of rcmd, an app for switching apps in the fastest way possible on the Mac: hold the Right Command key and press the key corresponding to the first letter of the app name (e.g. rcmd+M for Mail, rcmd+S for Safari etc.)

I'm posting this here now because I've just launched rcmd v2 which finally adds a free trial that can be downloaded from the official website: https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd

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In the past, I used apps like Karabiner, skhd and BetterTouchTool to manually assign Right Command + letter to apps for fast switching and launching. It worked really well as I mostly switched between the same few apps, but it quickly became annoying to always have to reassign those keys whenever I added a new app in my workflow.

Command Tab works perfectly fine for most people, but I usually have to switch between more than 10 apps while working and that meant I have to press the Tab key a lot of times to get to an app which I haven't focused recently.

rcmd is the answer to all those minor annoyances. It can:

• focus apps with a single keypress
• launch apps if they aren't already running
• hide the apps with the same single keypress if they are already focused
• adapt the keys dynamically to your app usage
• assign your own custom keys with a single keypress (Right Command + Right Option + letter to assign to the currently focused app)

The app costs $6 on the App Store and can be tried before buying by downloading it from the official website.

This forum should not be used for user support, so I'll also leave a link to the contact page in case you run into issues: https://lowtechguys.com/contact?app=rcmd

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I'm sure some people will not see a value in this, and will most likely not need the app, no problem with that. To give you an idea where the app shines best, I'll share my daily workflow and apps used here.

While developing rcmd, I use:

• Xcode for writing the code and building/debugging the app
• Sublime Text for more complex editing (lots of multicursor operations, regex replace etc.)
• Kitty as my terminal for git, rsync etc.
• NotePlan for task management, notes, blog writing
• Mimestream for answering support emails
• Discord for answering support chats
• Spotify for drowning out the kids noise playing outside so I can focus
• Pixelmator Pro for creating graphics like the annotated screenshots for the website
• Sketch for drawing app icons, symbols for the website and app
• Soulver for converting units, working with time or developing custom math formulas
• Safari, Firefox, Chrome for testing the website

I hope you can already see how hard it would be to Command Tab through so many apps.

rcmd allows me to:

• switch to any of those apps with a single keypress
• press rcmd-K to check some long running command in Kitty, then without lifting my fingers, press rcmd-K again to hide Kitty and continue what was doing
• launch those apps with the same keypress if they're not already running, I don't have to bother checking if they're running before switching to them
• focus apps that I call temporary by adding Right Shift (rshift)
  • for example I might need to focus Preview to see a PDF/image I just opened, but rcmd-P is already assigned
  • I just use rcmd-rshift-P to focus the non-assigned Preview app
  • if I have more temporary apps starting with P, pressing the hotkey again will cycle through those apps in order

You can see how my rcmd assignments look in the screenshot below:

 

[bsmr]

Thx for this app. Took a time to find it - but it looks very promising. Is there any chance to integrate a window snapper or window maximizing feature? Or do you use another app to make the 'other' part of app/window management within macOS.
Within Windows this is already integrated into the OS.

 

[alinpanaitiu]

Thx for this app. Took a time to find it - but it looks very promising. Is there any chance to integrate a window snapper or window maximizing feature? Or do you use another app to make the 'other' part of app/window management within macOS.
Within Windows this is already integrated into the OS.

Glad you like it 😊

For window management I use the open source yabai (window resizing and movement) and skhd (keyboard shortcuts for yabai).

They are more UNIX-like, in that they don’t have a graphical interface. They run as headless services and are configured through files like ~/.yabairc and ~/.skhdrc

If you like the more graphical approach, I recommend Swish (for more trackpad oriented workflows) or Rectangle (for keyboard-driven workflows)

 

[bsmr]

If you like the more graphical approach, I recommend Swish (for more trackpad oriented workflows) or Rectangle (for keyboard-driven workflows)

Thx for this recommendations. Already tried https://multitouch.app/ from Rectangle developer and of course BetterTouchTool, what actually is a tool, that does do everything within one app - but I don't like that it can do nearly everything. For me it's kinda too much integrated into the system - hard to say.

 

[bsmr]

Glad you like it 😊

For window management I use the open source yabai (window resizing and movement) and skhd (keyboard shortcuts for yabai).

They are more UNIX-like, in that they don’t have a graphical interface. They run as headless services and are configured through files like ~/.yabairc and ~/.skhdrc

If you like the more graphical approach, I recommend Swish (for more trackpad oriented workflows) or Rectangle (for keyboard-driven workflows)

Another point. Why didn't you use BetterTouchTool for all the rest, as it has everything in one app?