App Drawer

Install App Drawer

App Drawer needs macOS 14 or later. It runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. I’ve tested this build on macOS 15.

After you pay, connect your GitHub account in Polar and accept the invitation to the private repository. Download App-Drawer-1.0.0.zip from the App Drawer releases, unzip it, and move App Drawer.app to Applications. The download is signed with my Developer ID and notarized by Apple. The first time you open it, macOS asks if you’re sure. Click Open.

Open the panel

App Drawer lives in the Dock. Click its icon and the panel opens above it. Escape, or a click outside the panel, closes it.

On the left, Working On lists apps you built or committed to in the last 16 hours, plus any you pinned. It stays empty after a day away from those projects. On the right, every app is in a grid, including the ones on the left.

Type to search. The arrow keys move the selection, and Return opens the app.

Above the grid, switch between All, Shipped and Unshipped. An app is shipped when its project has a GitHub remote and a version tag like v1.2.0. Unshipped lists apps by date, and anything with no build or commit in 60 days sits below a line.

Choose the folders

The first run looks in ~/dev, ~/Developer, ~/Projects and ~/www, whichever of those exist. Open Settings with ⌘, to add a folder, remove one, or go back to those defaults.

App Drawer checks each project inside the folders you pick, 8 levels deep. It skips node_modules, old and similar folders. When a project has more than one build of the same app, you get the newest. It also picks up a copy in /Applications or ~/Applications when that copy has the same bundle identifier as a project build.

A build outside the folders you chose does not appear. App Drawer lists apps so you can open them again. It does not rebuild them.

Pin, hide and the Dock

Right-click an app in the panel:

• Pin to Working On keeps it on the left after the 16 hours pass.
• Keep in Dock writes that app into the Dock and restarts the Dock once, after a short pause if you toggle a few in a row. A running app already shows in the Dock, and App Drawer does not try to change that.
• Open Project opens the project folder in Cursor, Visual Studio Code or Zed, whichever is installed first. The item is missing when none of them is installed.
• Show in Finder reveals the build.
• Hide from App Drawer takes it out of the panel. File → Show Hidden Apps brings every hidden app back.

File → Show Raycast Apps Folder opens ~/Applications/App Drawer Apps. App Drawer keeps shortcuts there for the builds it lists, so Raycast can find them in its main search. Hidden and removed apps lose their shortcuts. Other files in that folder stay put.

Use the command line

appdrawer is inside the app. Link it onto your PATH:

ln -s "/Applications/App Drawer.app/Contents/Helpers/appdrawer" ~/.local/bin/appdrawer

List both columns, then pin, hide or keep an app in the Dock:

appdrawer list
appdrawer pin "Harbor Notes"
appdrawer hide "Field Notes"
appdrawer folders add ~/Code
appdrawer dock add Marble

You can name an app by its name, its project folder or its bundle id. Case and spaces don’t count. appdrawer help lists every command. appdrawer capabilities --json describes them for an agent.

A running App Drawer picks up these changes right away. folders add checks that every folder exists before it changes anything. dock add and dock remove restart the Dock.

Updates

There is no automatic update. When a new version is out, download the zip from the private repository’s Releases page, unzip it, and replace App Drawer.app. The repository stays private. Polar grants read-only access to the GitHub account you connect. You need that GitHub account to get the app and the source.

The source is MIT licensed. Scripts/build-app.sh builds a universal app. It signs with my Developer ID when that certificate is in the keychain, and ad hoc otherwise. Scripts/package-release.sh notarizes a copy when the certificate and the notary keychain profile are both available.