The Future of Flashlight

[nate-parrott]

Hacking Spotlight is impossible in 10.11. [1]

That's disappointing, but it's also a great opportunity to think about the future of Flashlight.

Even when Flashlight didn't do that much, it was still useful because it was a complement to all of Spotlight's existing features. But now Flashlight's grown up — it has hundreds of features built by a great community. I think it's useful enough to survive as a standalone app — a fresher, more open-source take on all the standalone launcher apps we love. [2]

I still won't be able to work on Flashlight for a couple more weeks, so here's a challenge for all of you:

Figure out what Flashlight can be once it's independent of Spotlight. And help me build it. [3]

[1] Apple's new "rootless" security system blocks code injection into system processes. Technically you can disable rootless – but I'll have to agree with the TotalFinder devs that it doesn't make sense to ask ordinary users to do this. And these security restrictions will only get tighter in the future – it doesn't make sense to build a product around circumventing them.

[2] Obviously we'll need to add things like app launching and file search, which Spotlight did for us. And we'll need to build a new UI. But that'll be fun.

[3] If you've got ideas, create issues for them and tag them with the future label. If you've got prototypes of standalone Flashlight UIs, add it in a new branch and submit a pull request with it.

[inket]

Here's a thing though: You don't have to disable SIP at all.

[orbitly]

@inket Do you know how to get it working?

[inket]

Get Flashlight working? No.

You'd need to rewrite it because it's based on EasySIMBL which doesn't work anymore. It needs to use SIMBL instead. Should work in theory.

For how to install it, just make it into a .pkg, boot into Recovery, install the .pkg through Terminal and restart. You technically don't need to disable SIP.

[designerzim]

SIMBL /also/ only works by disabling SIP. http://evotec.pl/mac-os-x-el-capitan-how-to-get-simbl-working-after-upgrade/

I like a good theory, but theories also require evidence. Do you want to provide some evidence of your genius, @inket?

[inket]

@WildElf If I provide evidence then, would that make me a genius? You don't have to be passive-aggressive.

Here's Safari 9 with 2 SIMBL plug-ins I made: one to limit the tabs' width (you can see the source code for that on my profile), and one I'm working on to make pinned tabs customizable.

Safari is supposed to be protected against code injection by SIP.

[avaidyam]

@inket Random Q, how'd you style your bash + Terminal like that?

[tsimmons]

@inket Also, have you gotten Flashlight to work using your method of installation for SIMBL and this method https://gist.github.com/selaromi/59666a71387d39b5bfac of running Flashlight?

[designerzim]

And a genius was born, @inket! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's how it works, historically and by definition.

If this just seems more passive-aggression, then the additional paragraphs of this post will just be more aggravating semantics you need not waste your time with. Thanks for pointing me to your code! I'll look for the evidence I seek there.

Aristotle, Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, every scientific genius in history was labeled as such because of the evidence they provided, and many authors, poets, and other creatives only for the work they produced.

Genius, from it's latin roots means "to bring into being, create, produce." Although it has since come to mean innate talents of an individual, no talent has been recognized by restricting oneself to hypotheticals, no matter our claims to talent.

Being a romantic, I set a very low bar for genius, myself, so I'm surprised that the compliment causes you offense. But since it does, I will call you genius no more. Leave it to the history writers to decide, and let us trade only in evidence instead of name-calling.

I apologize for being such an aggressive nuisance as to ask if your actions can back up your words (even though many great works are only recognized because of some nuisance who pressured the creator to publish, e.g. Newton, being pressured into greatness seems to cause you stress which you take out on convenient targets).

Although, it seems others clamor for even more evidence that your claims are valid, I won't presume to assault you further, or even make myself a target, by agreeing with their requests.

[paulrudy]

I've subscribed to this thread to keep up on the status of Flashlight... hope that it can manage to stay focused on that.

[Nxt3]

@avaidyam He used an emoji for the arrow; everything else is just customization done with a .bash_profile.

[inket]

@inket Also, have you gotten Flashlight to work using your method of installation for SIMBL and this method https://gist.github.com/selaromi/59666a71387d39b5bfac of running Flashlight?

Well, yeah. It does inject properly but it doesn't work with the new Spotlight because it's incompatible.

But it's no surprise because the end result of both methods of installing SIMBL is the same. The only reason the initial method disables SIP is to be able to write to system folders, which you can already do from another OS (like Recovery) without disabling SIP.

Honestly we should be way over this step by now, and looking into ways to make the SIMBL installation unattended.

@ericjzim You got issues. @Nxt3 inket/terminal-setup

Let's keep the discussion to Flashlight, thanks.

[avaidyam]

@inket You're totally right, I will take a look at this and maybe fork it and see what happens.

[orbitly]

https://github.com/nate-parrott/Flashlight/tree/menubar

This is a fork nate worked on a month ago in attempt to get it working. You can see he removed the check Spotlight version, and tons of other changes. I can't get it to build in Xcode though

[sheep-farming]

I think a UI and a set of symbology like the auto-complete command input line in Bloomberg Terminal can be much more convenient for hackers.

It use 2-4 chars acronym to represent a function, space for split, and remaining parameters followed.

Such as

GP MMM US Equity for the graph of 3M stock HP MMM US Equity for the history price table of 3M stock DINE for restaurant review, launch a window functioning similar with Yelp

The operation is really efficient, and it is cool

[gianvecchia]

If I disable rootless, can I make Flashlight work on my OS X 10.11?

[hgpt]

Any news? Is there any hope left for this amazing tool?

[zarkone]

[brandonhorst]

@hgpt @zarkone I apologize for the shameless self-promotion, but Lacona launches a week from today. It may fill some of your needs post-Flashlight.

[eirnym]

@brandonhorst will be it integrated into Spotlight?

[brandonhorst]

@eirnym Nope. It's an independent tool. I'm afraid any Spotlight integrations will be go the same way as Flashlight.

[avaidyam]

@brandonhorst I'm sorry I'm saying it like this, but that may mean DOA to a lot of people.

[brechtm]

@brandonhorst Please consider fallback to Spotlight as described in this comment.

[tsimmons]

@brandonhorst Will your app work like Alfred 2 or other launcher apps? Need beta-testers?

[glitchninja2000]

@brandonhorst @brechtm I think brechtm's idea is probably the best one. I've been looking into integrating Flashlight into an older of Spotlight. If anyone has an update where Flashlight works, please send me the Spotlight app located in HD/System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app. I've been able to run two instances of Spotlight already, so that wouldn't be a problem. There is the issue of quiting the second Spotlight, since you have to use killall Spotlight, but I'm hoping using an old native Spotlight would be able to work.

[brandonhorst]

@avaidyam I understand. I think that it's a necessary evil at some point. In my own work, I've found that Alfred (and now, my yet-unreleased build of Lacona) covers all of my spotlight use-cases by duplicating the most common functionality. But I understand that this won't be true for many people.

@brechtm @glitchninja2000 That is a good suggestion and may come at some point in the future, but the Lacona interface is pretty distinct from spotlight - focusing on Natural Language parsing rather than keywords. But it may come at some time version 2+.

@tsimmons Yeah, it works similarly to Alfred, just much more powerful. The beta launches on Friday (the 29th), so you can try it out then!

[controversial]

With iOS 9, apple introduced a whole big thing for developers to integrate their apps with spotlight, right? I think there's a good chance they're planning to put something similar in OS X 10.12. Anyway, we'll see in June.

[vlux]

Hope the FlashLight Long Live! @brandonhorst I came from the Alfred. Compared these two, the FlashLight is more suitable for my work. So sad that I came late and the 10.11 destroy everything. Hope see ur guys future awesome works. :+1:

[mesqueeb]

The difference with Alfred was that flashlight shows information directly in the search box. e.g. google image search would show images straight in the spotlight search box.

Is there anyone who can make an app that does this that is just as fast as flashlight was?

[brandonhorst]

@mesqueeb http://lacona.io/ is getting there! Not there yet, unfortunately. But it's improving every day!

[Kiura]

hey, great app, loved flashlight, and lacona seems to be a good replacement, but the thing I miss the most from flashlight is being able to see the results within the app and some plugins. Are the feature and plugins will be added to lacona in near future?

[brandonhorst]

Yes, soon! That is being discussed in https://github.com/laconalabs/LaconaApp/issues/31

[Kiura]

Thx for info, great job! )

[jcampbell05]

Is it possible to override the spotlight shortcut ?

[revolter]

@jcampbell05: Uncheck (or change the shortcut to something else) System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts (top bar) > Spotlight (left bar) > Show Spotlight search and then I suppose you can set cmd+space for Lacona, but I can't test it right now.

[Shawzborne]

@brandonhorst Is there a way to get Lacona to search network drives? Such as a local Synology NAS?

[brandonhorst]

@Shawzborne Lacona uses the normal Spotlight index - it should find the same files/apps/whatever that Spotlight finds.

I don't want to have too much Lacona discussion on this thread. Could we move discussion to laconalabs/LaconaApp?

[JMY1000]

@brandonhorst Seconded.

[w0lfschild]

Here's my fork for 10.10+ (Yosemite and El Capitan).

https://github.com/w0lfschild/Flashlight

[JMY1000]

@w0lfschild Does it work on 10.11?

[controversial]

@JMY1000 That's what

10.10_+_

would imply

[JMY1000]

@controversial Usually, but given all the trouble people have been having getting it to work on 10.11, I just wanted to make sure.

[controversial]

Ok. I haven't actually tried it myself, but I assume it does

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 11:57 AM JMY1000 notifications@github.com wrote:

@controversial https://github.com/controversial Usually, but given all the trouble people have been having getting it to work on 10.11, I just wanted to make sure.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/nate-parrott/Flashlight/issues/537#issuecomment-225625040, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe/AJ5YryBWylfLbKyi4D29UDa_HSA54XVWks5qLX3NgaJpZM4Fh0UF .

[juni-vogt]

Totally works on el capitan, super cool

[avaidyam]

But does it work on macOS 12 Sierra? 🙄

[tsimmons]

What were your steps to get it running on El Cap? Did you disable SIP, install SIMBL first, etc.? @matthias-vogt

[orbitly]

Thank you so fucking much, w0lfschild!

[w0lfschild]

@tsimmons There are install instructions in the repos README.

Here are some even more clear instructions.

1. Download mySIMBL
   • Unzip
   • Disable System Integrity Protection (Only if using 10.11+)
   • Open mySIMBL.app
   • Enter password to install SIMBL
   • Enable System Integrity Protection (Only if using 10.11+)
2. Download Flashlight
   • Unzip
   • Open Flashlight.app
   • Install the plugins you want to use
3. Open Spotlight and start using Flashlight

[tsimmons]

@w0lfschild Perfect! This is awesome.

[Bisewski]

Awesome! You saved lives :D

On Jun 13, 2016, at 17:26, Toby Simmons notifications@github.com wrote:

@w0lfschild https://github.com/w0lfschild Perfect! This is awesome.

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[wickles]

This is better than WWDC!