Instant App Opener
A tray-resident desktop launcher that opens your usual apps from a global hotkey — no browser tab circus.
SYS.STATUS: v1.2.0 — sub-150ms popup, global hotkeys registered, lives in the tray
I got tired of opening the same five tools through bookmarks and waiting on browser chrome. Instant App Opener is a small Electron utility that sits in the tray until you summon it.
Why I started this
Browser bookmarks pretend to be launchers. They’re not. DNS lookup, extension overhead, and twenty restored tabs sit between you and the app you actually wanted. I wanted system-level shortcuts to a configurable map of paths — local binaries, scripts, URLs — without a full productivity suite attached.
What I tried (and what broke)
Electron wraps a minimal shell: boot to tray, register global keyboard listeners, read a local config, spawn the target. Node.js handles filesystem paths; the popup UI is vanilla JS and CSS — no framework tax on something that should appear instantly.
Early builds were slow because I over-rendered the popup. Stripping dependencies and caching static assets got cold open under 150ms, which was the bar I cared about.
Global hotkey registration across platforms is finicky — conflicts with other tools, focus stealing, waking from sleep. v1.2.0 is where registration felt reliable enough to leave running all day.
Fuckups & learnings
- Electron for a launcher is heavy on disk, light on dev time. Tradeoff I accepted for cross-platform tray + hotkeys without writing three native shells.
- Config format should be human-editable JSON, not buried in a settings UI nobody opens.
- Speed is the feature. If it hesitates, you’ll just Alt-Tab back to the browser habit.
Where it stands now
v1.2.0 is fully operational: custom app paths, global hotkeys, silent tray startup. It does one job and stays out of the way.
Closing transmission
Small tool, honest scope. If you live in hotkeys, fork it and map your chaos.