App Buddy is a free Mac utility from prolific indie developer Sindre Sorhus that acts as a unified companion panel for his entire suite of Mac apps, giving you a single place to access settings, tips, and support resources across every Sorhus app you have installed.
What is App Buddy?
App Buddy is a lightweight menubar utility that connects all of Sindre Sorhus's Mac apps under one roof. Rather than hunting through individual app preferences or bookmarking separate support pages, App Buddy surfaces contextual help, changelogs, and quick-access shortcuts for every Sorhus app it detects on your machine.
If you have even a handful of Sorhus apps installed — Lungo, Hypercal, Gifski, Mango, or any of the dozens he maintains — you'll immediately recognise the problem App Buddy solves. Each app is excellent in isolation, but they share no common control surface. App Buddy provides exactly that: a thin, coherent layer that ties them together without bloat.
What does App Buddy do best?
App Buddy shines as a discovery and orientation tool — it tells you what Sorhus apps you already own and surfaces the ones you don't know yet. The first time I opened it I realised I had three Sorhus utilities sitting dormant in my Applications folder that I'd forgotten about entirely.
Beyond inventory, App Buddy links you directly to the relevant settings pane, the app's tip library, and the GitHub issues page for each detected title. That last detail matters more than it sounds: Sorhus's apps are open-source and actively maintained, so knowing how to reach the issue tracker in two clicks rather than ten is a genuine productivity gain when something breaks.
- Auto-detection: scans your Applications folder and builds a live list of installed Sorhus apps
- Contextual tips: surfaces usage tricks specific to each app — not generic help text
- Direct support links: GitHub, release notes, and the official site per app, one click away
- Zero configuration: there is nothing to set up; it just works from the menubar
Is App Buddy free?
Yes — App Buddy is free to download with no in-app purchases, subscriptions, or hidden tiers. Like most of Sindre Sorhus's personal-utility releases, it is offered freely to the community as a companion piece to the broader app ecosystem he maintains.
Who should use App Buddy?
If you have one or two Sorhus apps, App Buddy is a nice-to-have. If you have six or more — which is easy to accumulate given how good and free most of them are — it becomes a small but real quality-of-life upgrade. Power users who like keeping their toolkit organised, or developers who follow Sorhus's GitHub and want changelogs surfaced automatically, will get the most from it.
It is not aimed at users who want a general-purpose app launcher or macro tool. For that, Raycast or Alfred are the right picks. App Buddy has a deliberately narrow scope: it is for Sorhus app owners, full stop, and it does that single job cleanly.
How does App Buddy compare to alternatives?
There is no direct competitor because the use-case is unique to Sorhus's ecosystem. The closest analogies are app-specific companion apps — think Setapp's discovery shelf, or Bartender's menubar management — but neither of those is a fair comparison. App Buddy is not trying to manage all your apps; it is a purpose-built interface for one developer's catalog.
If you came here expecting a general Mac app manager, tools like CleanMyMac, Setapp, or Canister (Homebrew Cask GUI) are more relevant. But if you already rely on Sorhus utilities, nothing else fills this particular gap.
What are the limitations of App Buddy?
App Buddy's usefulness scales directly with how invested you are in the Sorhus ecosystem. Run none of his apps and this utility is inert. It also has no cross-developer ambitions — it will never manage apps from other developers, by design. Some users might wish for a broader indie-developer companion tool, but that is a different product entirely, and App Buddy makes no pretence of being it.
Native Apple Silicon support is what you'd expect from a modern Sorhus release — his apps consistently target the current platform generation — but if you need to confirm compatibility before downloading, the official site at sindresorhus.com/app-buddy has current system requirements.
