Cerebro

Cerebro is a free, open-source application launcher for macOS (and Windows and Linux) that lets you search apps, files, web content, and custom plugins from a single keyboard shortcut, without ever touching your mouse.

What is Cerebro?

Cerebro is an extensible, community-built launcher that sits quietly in the background until you summon it — typically with Alt+Space — and then gets out of your way the moment you've launched what you needed. Built on Electron and JavaScript, it follows the same philosophy as Alfred or Raycast: your keyboard is faster than your Dock, and context-switching is the enemy of focus.

The project lives entirely in the open on GitHub, which means the feature set is shaped by real users scratching real itches rather than a product team chasing a subscription roadmap. For a certain kind of power user, that provenance alone is worth something.

What does Cerebro do best?

Cerebro's strongest suit is its plugin architecture — the launcher is almost deliberately minimal at its core, and the community plugin ecosystem is where most of the interesting work happens.

• App and file launch: Type a few letters and Cerebro fuzzy-matches installed apps and recent files before you finish the word. It's not as instantaneous as Spotlight's Spotlight-index integration, but it's snappy enough for everyday use.
• Web search shortcuts: Prefix a query with a plugin alias — g cats for Google, yt lo-fi for YouTube — and Cerebro opens the result directly in your browser. No address bar, no friction.
• Calculator and unit conversion: Inline math just works. Type 400 EUR in USD or sqrt(144) and the answer appears before you've hit Enter.
• Plugin extensibility: Because the entire plugin API is JavaScript, any developer can ship a Cerebro plugin in an afternoon. Plugins exist for GitHub search, npm package lookups, emoji pickers, color conversion, and plenty more.

I've had Cerebro running alongside Raycast on the same machine for a month, and the honest assessment is that the two barely compete: Raycast is richer out of the box, but Cerebro's JS plugin surface is friendlier for a developer who wants to wire up something idiosyncratic without learning a Swift-adjacent extension framework.

Is Cerebro free?

Yes — Cerebro is completely free to download, use, and modify. There is no paid tier, no "Pro" upgrade, and no usage limits. The project is MIT-licensed, meaning you can even fork it and build your own launcher on top of it.

The trade-off is the one that comes with every volunteer-maintained open-source tool: updates arrive when contributors have bandwidth, not on a quarterly release cadence. The project has had quieter periods, so if cutting-edge macOS feature compatibility is a hard requirement, keep that in mind.

Who should use Cerebro?

Cerebro is a natural fit for developers and technically confident users who want a launcher they can bend to their workflow without paying for a subscription or navigating a proprietary extension marketplace. If you've written a JavaScript function before, you can write a Cerebro plugin — full stop.

It's also worth considering for cross-platform teams: unlike Alfred (macOS only) or PowerToys Run (Windows only), Cerebro runs on all three major operating systems with an identical plugin API. Sharing launcher plugins with a Linux or Windows colleague is a genuine use-case here.

If you're a non-developer who simply wants the fastest possible way to open apps, Spotlight has improved enough in recent macOS releases that the pure app-launching case is well covered by the OS. Cerebro earns its keep when you want to extend your launcher, not just run it.

What are the best Cerebro alternatives?

The launcher space on macOS is competitive and worth knowing before you commit your muscle memory to any one tool.

• Raycast — the current benchmark for power-user launchers on macOS. Faster than Cerebro, with a polished extensions store and a free core tier. The extensions are TypeScript-based and well-documented. The downside: macOS-only, and the company has a freemium business model.
• Alfred — the long-standing favourite before Raycast arrived. The Powerpack (one-time purchase) unlocks workflows, clipboard history, and file actions that remain best-in-class. Also macOS-only.
• Spotlight — free, built into macOS, and genuinely good for basic app and file launch since Monterey. Lacks extensibility entirely, but if you only want to open apps and search files, don't overlook it.
• LaunchBar — a long-running, paid launcher with deep macOS integration and a loyal following among users who prefer its learn-once-use-forever approach over Raycast's more visual style.

Cerebro sits in a niche: free like Spotlight, extensible like Alfred and Raycast, and cross-platform like nothing else in this list. That combination is narrow but genuine.

How does Cerebro compare to Raycast?

Raycast wins on speed, polish, and breadth of available extensions right out of the box. Cerebro wins on openness, portability, and zero cost with zero strings. For a developer working across macOS and Linux, or someone philosophically opposed to cloud-synced launcher profiles, Cerebro is the more principled choice. For everyone else, Raycast is probably the practical one.