App Pane

App Pane is a macOS Electron application that acts as a visual app launcher and manager. It scans installed applications, allows for quick launching, pinning, hiding, and organizing apps, and includes cache management, icon indexing, and a customizable global shortcut.

🚀 Features

• 🔍 Automatically scans and indexes installed macOS applications.
• 📌 Pin or unpin apps for quick access.
• 🙈 Hide apps from view (but keep them searchable).
• 🖼️ Caches and displays app icons.
• 🗂️ Reorder apps manually or alphabetically (A–Z / Z–A).
• 🔁 Automatic cache reloading every 5 minutes.
• 🛠️ Reindex apps or delete the cache via the UI.
• 🧭 Open apps or reveal them in Finder.
• 🎛️ Dock icon visibility toggle.
• ⌨️ Global shortcut support to quickly toggle the app's visibility.

🧱 Built With

• Electron
• Node.js
• electron-prompt

📁 Folder Structure

AppPane/
├── index.html              # Main UI
├── preload.js              # Preload script for IPC
├── main.js                 # Main Electron process (provided above)
├── update                  # Updater executable (copied to temp folder)
├── prompt.css              # Custom styling for prompts

🖥️ Requirements

• macOS (due to open and Finder-specific features)
• Node.js & npm installed
• Electron (via npm install)

🛠️ Installation

git clone https://github.com/systemsoftware/app-pane.git
cd app-pane
npm install

🏁 Run the App

npm start

🔧 Customization

• To hide the dock icon, a file named hide-dock is placed in userData path (~/Library/Application Support/App Pane/).
• To set a global shortcut, a shortcut file is created in the same directory.
• Use the right-click menu inside the app to modify these settings.

💾 App Cache & Icon Storage

• App metadata: ~/Library/Application Support/App Pane/apps.json
• Cached app icons: ~/Library/Application Support/App Pane/app-icons/

⚠️ Safety Notes

• On reindexing or deleting cache, the app will relaunch or exit automatically.
• Cached icon folders and metadata files will be removed.

🧪 Development Notes

• The updater is a separate executable copied to a temp directory and invoked as needed.
• IPC handlers manage app data, UI actions, and user input securely and asynchronously.
• Reloading happens every 5 minutes to reflect app changes.

📚 Global Shortcut Help

To define a shortcut (e.g., Cmd+Shift+A), refer to Electron Accelerator Docs

📄 License

MIT License