Start with what ships in the box
The built-in commands cover more than people expect, and they are free. Clipboard history, Snippets, Quicklinks, window management, the calculator with unit and currency conversion, emoji search, file search and app launching are all there before you install a single extension. Set the global hotkey to ⌘Space, disable Spotlight's, and the switch takes a minute.
Quicklinks deserve a mention on their own. A Quicklink is a URL with a placeholder, so you type a query in the launcher and land directly on a filtered view in your tracker or your dashboard. It removes a browser tab and two clicks from anything you open daily.
A paste popup opening while a shortcut is held, then closing on release, with no click anywhere. Items go out in the order they were collected, one per keypress.
Both interactions are keyboard-only by design. That is the same reason a launcher wins over a menu bar icon: your hands never leave the keys.
The limitation of the built-ins: they are deliberately shallow. Each one covers the common case and stops, which is the correct decision for a launcher and occasionally the wrong one for your workflow.
The extensions I keep
Homebrew. Search, install and uninstall packages and casks without opening a terminal. Typing an app name and pressing Enter to install it is the fastest software install path on macOS. It needs Homebrew already on the machine, and the local package index can sit a little behind the real one until it refreshes.
Kill Process. Search a process by name and end it. This replaced my habit of opening Activity Monitor, waiting for it to sort, and hunting through a list. It shows raw process names, so helper processes look alarming and killing the wrong one is entirely possible.
Coffee. Keeps the Mac awake while something long runs. It wraps the same behaviour the system provides, in one command instead of a menu bar icon. It stays on until you turn it off, so it is easy to leave a laptop awake all night on battery.
Color Picker. Picks a colour from anywhere on screen and gives you hex or rgb, with a history of recent picks. For reading a value off a mockup it beats opening a design tool. It picks and converts, and it does not manage palettes, so it will not replace a proper colour library.
Toothpick. Connects and disconnects Bluetooth devices from the launcher. Headphones and a keyboard switch in two keystrokes instead of a trip to System Settings. It only sees devices macOS has already paired, and a device in a stuck state still needs the Settings pane.
GitHub. Searches repositories, pull requests and issues, and shows your notifications. Opening a specific PR by typing part of its title is worth the install on its own. It needs an authorised token, and its notification list can lag behind what the web interface shows.
Linear. Creates and finds issues without loading the app. Filing a bug while you are still in the app where you found it removes the main excuse for not filing it. It needs an API key and it is useless if your team lives in Jira.
Script Commands. Runs your own shell, Python or AppleScript from the launcher, with output shown inline. This is the escape hatch for anything nobody has written an extension for. You are maintaining a script, with no error handling except what you wrote.
