start overview

Discover start - The ultimate launcher for macOS!

With start, the innovative launcher for macOS, you can open applications, documents, shortcuts, URLs, and folders in an instant. Say goodbye to clutter - start brings order and efficiency to your workflow.

Organize your digital life

start helps you optimize the organization of your applications, documents, and folders. Thanks to its well-designed organizational system, you can quickly and easily find everything you need. start automatically collects all applications available through Spotlight, and you can manually add additional files, URLs, and folders as desired. Open your entries with a mouse click or even faster with a hotkey. Keep track of your entries at all times with the help of tags, colors, and comments. With start, managing your workflow becomes a breeze!

Exciting Features

Tags: Create collections for applications, frequently used folders, scripts, and more. Organize and sort your files on macOS like never before.
Comments: Add helpful notes and comments to your entries, so you know exactly what features they offer. Small comments with a big impact - always stay on top of things.
Colors: Highlight your entries according to your preferences. With just a few clicks, you can assign colors to them and find them even faster.
Hotkeys: Assign custom key combinations to individual entries or tags and launch them instantly from anywhere. Your workflow will never be interrupted again!

What's new in version 9.3

New

The behavior when opening applications has been improved in Start 9.3. If the desired application is not already open, it will be launched as before. If it is already open but in the background, it will now automatically be brought to the foreground.
New is the behavior when the application is already open and currently in the foreground: in this case, it will now be hidden.
This is especially useful if you open applications in Start using a keyboard shortcut: with the shortcut, you can now not only launch an application or bring it to the foreground, but also quickly hide it again by pressing the shortcut a second time.
If you prefer the previous behavior, that is of course still possible: in the settings, you can disable the new opening behavior at any time.

Improved

Internal processes have been optimized so that Start uses fewer resources.

Bugfixes

In some cases, Start was unable to open folders even though the necessary permissions were present.

4.2

(6 Reviews of start)

Comments
User Ratings

Eric•Woehler

May 19, 2021

4.5

0.0

Version: 4.5

Downloaded and started using this in the last few days. Useful utility in providing menu-based access to all your apps and utilities through customizable hierarchical folder structure. It uses Spotlight to assign apps to categories by default to get some content to folders, but all the tags and structure can be tweaked. Definitely spend time reading the manual to get the most out of this app as it has some features not immediately obvious. It's not a replacement for FinderPop - that legendary CM that old(er) users will remember. Think more like FolderGlance without the CM accessibility. Based on trialling/using other Menu bar apps, this is the most sophisticated and most useful in terms of features in my opinion. Def worth trying if you're looking for a menu bar utility under the ever-tightening/choking restrictions that is Big Bur.

May 15, 2021

Looking to purchase - wondering if anyone has set it up to open with a trackpad rather than a mouse? From various blogs, users have set trigger using mouse wheels etc to open Start, but that's not an option w trackpad and various one/two/three finger touches already assigned to other actions. Seems promising as potential replacement for FinderPop and FolderGlance for Big Sur+

ahmedhatata-ah

Feb 26, 2020

3.3

5.0

Version: 3.3

This application is incredibly helpful and stunning seriously , it combines all my documents, folders and URLs that I use every day in one place at a single click away and the features of tagging and color picking make it convenient and super quick , seriously one of the most amazing applications that enter the OS X platform since a while , it deserves more than 5 stars hands down . It let save a lot of time and save me space on my Mac as I deleted 2 essential Mac apps I have one the menu bar to access applications and folders . Very useful app.

DragonMaster

Nov 17, 2019

3.1

Version: 3.1

Amazing launcher. Takes the place of the need to se multiple launchers to create your own special tool.

anonymous-thrush-1121

Feb 13, 2018

1.2

Version: 1.2

use LaunchPad. or drop Dock from folder that app alias. no more Mac resource and no more money. If you are so obsessed with the ghost of the start menu, return to Windows.