CueStart
Launcher, snippets, clipboard
Only for Mac
Free · In‑App Purchases
Mac
You know what you need. Not what it's called.
Spotlight searches names. CueStart searches what you noted down about an app. Write "invoice", "crop an image" or "chart" next to your apps — and find them again, even months later.
HOW IT WORKS
A shortcut of your choosing brings the search to the middle of the screen, whichever app happens to be in front. Type, pick with the arrow keys, hit Return. The window disappears by itself.
YOUR OWN KEYWORDS
For every app you write down, at your leisure, what you use it for. The search covers keywords and names at once, and several words can be combined.
IT REMEMBERS YOUR CHOICE
Launch an app for a search text and it comes first next time. Return then hits the right one straight away.
COLLECTING WITHOUT THE GRIND
Read in all your apps at once or pick them one by one. Whatever gets installed later, CueStart picks up on its own — the application folders are watched while it runs.
KEEPING AN OVERVIEW
Coloured dots show what has just arrived and where keywords are still missing. If an app disappears from your Mac, your entry stays and is marked as not installed — your work is not lost.
EXCLUSIONS AND BACKUP
Apps you never want to launch go on an exclusion list. Your keywords, the exclusions and every setting go into one backup file; when reading it back you choose between replacing and merging.
MADE FOR THE MAC
A real Mac app: no web view, no Electron. Light, dark or like the system, and if you like, no Dock icon at all — just the menu bar. No account, no tracking, no cloud — your keywords stay on your Mac.
TEXT SNIPPETS
Put a ">" in front in the search window and CueStart searches your text snippets instead of your apps. Return puts the text on the clipboard. They are found by name and keywords, and kept in the same window as the apps.
TO YOUR TASTE
The search window comes with translucent material, with a fine grain in eight colours, or in a solid colour — plus three shapes from square to very rounded.
A CLIPBOARD THAT REMEMBERS
If you want it to, CueStart keeps what you copy — text and images alike. A "#" in the search window brings it all back, ready for your own keywords. You decide how much is kept. Content marked as confidential is never read, and apps of your choosing stay out entirely — password managers are preset. Recording is off to begin with; a checkbox in the menu bar turns it on and off. Pin the entries that matter: they stay until you delete them, and they take your own tags, which CueStart suggests as you type. Tags are managed in one place — renaming one changes it everywhere. And you can drag an entry straight from the results into another app.
SWITCH INSTEAD OF RELAUNCH
A ":" in the search window, and every running app is there — the one you used last on top. Keep typing to narrow it down, Return brings the app forward. Shortcuts of their own also open your apps, your snippets or the clipboard straight away.
LANGUAGES
German, English, Danish, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Simplified Chinese, switchable while running.
Try it free for seven days, then a one-time purchase. No subscription.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Thank you for using CueStart! This version brings quite a few new things:
• Ready for the future: CueStart is now built with Swift 6. Its stricter checks help everything run even more reliably.
• Ready for macOS 27: CueStart has been tested on macOS 27 Golden Gate.
• Several at once: In the clipboard you now select just like in the Finder – Command for single entries, Shift for a whole run. You can delete your selection in one go or copy it all together.
• Clearing the selection: In the management window, simply click the empty space below the last row of a list – for apps, snippets, clipboard and tags alike.
• Just the way you like it: The confirmation when deleting from the clipboard can be switched off in the settings. Clearing the whole list still asks, just to be safe.
• The legend filters: Click a coloured dot below the app list to see only those apps – all without keywords, for instance. A second click clears the filter.
• Placeholders in snippets: date, time, clipboard, user name, a fresh identifier and the app you came from. Press ⌘Y to preview the finished text.
Enjoy CueStart!
The developer, Klaus Mack, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Klaus Mack
- Size
- 3.5 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 15.6 or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 15.6 or later.
- Mac
- Languages
English and 8 more
- English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Full Version $5.99
- Copyright
- © Klaus Mack Software