TheBar is a native command bar. Search apps, run slash commands, ask AI with your own provider key, translate and draw on device, find places, recall anything you copied. One key combo. Always there.
The bar classifies what you typed before you finish typing. Apps, AI, web. The window reflows in place. No tabs. No second screen. Same key combo.
Three keystrokes to any app, file, bookmark, or recent. The mnemonic ranker learns from what you actually pick over time, not just what was indexed last. Drag-and-drop on the bar accepts files and selected text directly.
Press Return on a question and the bar streams a response. Conversation history persists. The active app, your current selection, and clipboard are passed in as context (privacy toggle in Settings). Bring your own key for any of five providers, or run Ollama locally.
DuckDuckGo Instant Answers inline. Capped at eight hits so the window fits a 13-inch laptop. ⌥1 through ⌥8 opens a hit in the browser. Space toggles a WKWebView preview pane that loads the page right inside the bar.
We use Apple frameworks for what Apple does well. Translate, draw, find a place. Nothing leaves your machine. No third-party API key to fetch, no rate limit to hit, no provider to lose money on a Tuesday.
/translateApple's Translation framework, fully on-device. Twenty languages plus Simplified and Traditional Chinese, with friendly aliases ("chinese" maps to zh-Hans). The first run of a pair triggers Apple's native download sheet. After that, offline forever.
/mapMKLocalSearch results render as a real MKMapView with numbered orange pins. Click a row to drop the place into Maps.app, or tap the Directions pill to open turn-by-turn from your current location. Region-biased to your last-known coordinate when CoreLocation is authorised.
/drawApple Image Playground. Four images per prompt, generated on device. ⌥1 through ⌥4 copies a tile to the clipboard. Space goes fullscreen, Esc collapses. macOS 15.4 or later, Apple Intelligence eligible Mac required.
/ and the menu writes itself.Every shipped command in the registry. Hover to pause. Each is a single keystroke.
Honest table. Spotlight, Alfred, Raycast, TheBar. Each cell reflects what each tool actually ships today (free tiers where applicable; paid additions noted as partial). If we say yes, the code is in the repository.
| Capability | Spotlight macOS built-in | Alfred paid Powerpack | Raycast freemium, Pro tier | TheBar v1 free |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI | ||||
AI chat, BYOK across providers TheBar: 5 providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Ollama, Groq). | no | no | partial | yes |
Run AI locally (Ollama) | no | no | partial | yes |
Plan-based agent + safety guards /act runs PlanGenerator → ActionExecutor with explicit guards. | no | no | no | yes |
| On-device | ||||
Translate (Apple Translation framework) Spotlight has inline translate but not as a callable command flow. | partial | no | no | yes |
Image generation (Image Playground) macOS 15.4+ on Apple Intelligence eligible Macs. | no | no | no | yes |
Map search + driving directions | partial | no | no | yes |
| Productivity | ||||
Clipboard history, built-in 200-item ring buffer, SHA256-deduped, SQLite-backed, free. | no | partial | partial | yes |
Snippets / text expander | no | partial | partial | yes |
Window tiling | no | no | yes | yes |
Inline web preview (WKWebView) Press Space on a focused web hit. Esc collapses. | no | no | no | yes |
| Extensibility | ||||
Extension SDK TheBar: JavaScript today. Deno + Python next. | no | partial | yes | yes |
Sandboxed extension runtime Subprocess + per-manifest heap cap. | no | no | yes | yes |
| Cost & openness | ||||
Free, no Pro tier | yes | no | no | yes |
Source-available | no | no | no | yes |
No telemetry by default | partial | yes | no | yes |
Data point sources: each competitor's public website + free-tier release notes as of 2026. "Partial" means the capability exists only in a paid tier, or only as a system feature outside the launcher window. We update this table when the competitive surface moves.
Each cell below is a real, shipped feature. Hover the cell to see the violet hairline trace itself. Nothing here is roadmap or marketing language.
Type / to see the menu. Tab autocompletes. Each command is a single keystroke from your current task. Extensions add more.
/askStream AI answer with active app + selection context/screenCapture a region; ask AI about what's on screen/actPlan-based agent: PlanGenerator + ActionExecutor/contextInspect the current context snapshot/modelSwitch model on the fly/providerSwitch provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, ...)/translateOn-device translation, 22 languages/drawGenerate four images on-device (macOS 15.4+)/mapApple Maps + turn-by-turn directions/defineNative dictionary lookup/calendarSearch and create events via EventKit/findSpotlight-style file search/clipboard200-item history with ⌥N quick-copy/tileWindow tiling: halves, quadrants, thirds/3paneSplit focused window across three panes/remindCreate a reminder via EventKit/screenshotCapture region, window, or full screen/googleOpen a Google search in the browser/youtubeOpen a YouTube search/githubOpen a GitHub search/wifiShow current network details/dndToggle Do Not Disturb/darkmodeToggle macOS appearance/volumeSet system volume/brightnessSet display brightness/muteToggle system mute/lockLock the screen/sleepPut the Mac to sleep/restartRestart with confirmation/shutdownShut down with confirmation/quitQuit a running application/killForce-quit a misbehaving process/sshConnect to a saved SSH host/settingsOpen the settings window/backupSnapshot user data to a single file/restoreRestore from a backup snapshot/reloadReload extensions in place/updateCheck for application updatesClipboardStore.swiftTranslation frameworkImagePlaygroundSearchIndexHistoryStoreRPCServerAIEngineWebSearchProviderUpdateServiceTelemetryOAuthServiceApp sandbox is intentionally disabled in entitlements. The bar needs full Mac access to tile windows, type for you, and read the active selection. We ship the binary directly so the bar can keep doing those things without going through the App Store sandbox.
macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later. Apple Silicon or Intel. About 9 MB on disk. For /draw you additionally need macOS 15.4+ and an Apple Intelligence eligible Mac.