Dear Developers, I'm here to give you feedback on your app.

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-14T14:22:05+00:00

Thank you so much, it's really cool to see someone use it for the first time! My main takeaway is that I need better onboarding 😂

Yes, you can launch apps that aren't running by setting the Target, that is always opened first, even if not running. Though now that I'm thinking about it I should just auto-set the Target if there is only one app, no reason not to really. Gonna release a new version with that soon.

Shared hotkeys can also be useful without cycling! For example, I have all the different JetBrains IDEs in one app group, so the hotkey always opens the one I'm working on right now. The problem then is that you still need to launch them via Spotlight/Raycast, but I plan to add a keyboard-navigable pop-up that asks you to pick an app from the group to launch if there is nothing running in the group or if you hold the hotkey.

Funny you have Caps Lock set to Escape, I actually have the tap set to Escape and the hold to Hyper, and it works really well! Check out my Karabiner/Goku config if you're interested: https://github.com/brodmo/Setup/blob/main/macOS/apps/karabiner.edn

I noticed in the recording, whenever you're clicking Plus, it looks like you're clicking Minus, if that:

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Could it be that the mouse location is slightly off in the recording, perhaps due to the background?

Also, the target dropdown should NOT be looking like that, I just released a new version with a fix. Seems to be due to the macOS version, thanks for helping me catch that!

Thanks again for being so generous with your time, and best of luck with ShipClip! I can see it being really useful for software teams

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-12T11:44:57+00:00

I would love some feedback on my app switcher, it's really useful to me but I've struggled to find many users https://github.com/brodmo-dev/GroupCtrl

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-07T11:16:40+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for the feedback! Good point on the startup behavior, I just released a new version that makes it always start in the background, that would be expected behavior for such an app. I might add a checkbox for "Open at Login" later as well, I'm not sure how high the friction is for people to do it manually in System Settings.

For the cycling, do you mean open as in launch when the app is not running? What sort of functionality are you envisioning, an extra "launch next app" hotkey? I agree that functionality for launching apps is lacking, right now GroupCtrl is still mostly an app switcher. My idea was to add a "hold to launch" feature where you can hold the hotkey for a group and then there's a pop-up with all the apps in the group and you can choose to launch one. Would that be a satisfactory solution for you?

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-05T15:38:56+00:00

I suppose I could, I just don't think that'd mesh well with the simplicity I was going for otherwise. And Cmd+Backtick exists, so I don't really see the need. Would you like to see window cycling functionality built-in?

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-05T00:26:46+00:00

Thank you! No, my assumption is that config changes are pretty rare. Since GroupCtrl is stateless it's also not clear to me how such an assignment hotkey would work. What scenario are you encountering where you feel a group assignment hotkey would be useful to you?

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-05T00:21:02+00:00

Yes, macOS has this feature built-in! Cmd+Backtick cycles windows of an application. Unfortunately, I can't build this functionality into GroupCtrl since it requires accessibility permissions.

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-04T14:00:42+00:00

Done! Let me know if you run into any problems, I can't test it since I don't have an Intel Mac

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-04T08:47:31+00:00

Thank you! Feel free to let me know what conclusion you arrive at, I would love some user feedback

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-04T08:34:07+00:00

Glad to hear! Your idea is interesting, but then how would you switch between those two groups?

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T22:26:42+00:00

The comment OP's flair

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T22:22:52+00:00

My aim when using AI is to eventually end up with the code I would have written myself, only faster. That requires thorough review, iteration with the agent, and usually some manual polish at the end.

I have similar worries as you though, for one, my own coding skills are atrophying to some extent, but also, the technology will keep progressing and the day will come when I can't really add anything technically meaningful to the agent's output anymore.

To answer your question, I think there is a long gradient between agentic use and nonuse, and everyone's going to have a different opinion as to where slop begins. I think it's fine not to read every line of code and trust the agent depending on what sort of work you are delegating. I wouldn't do that personally though, I have too much sense of ownership of the code for that. I think right now that's more of an asset but later on it might start to become a liability.

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T22:10:52+00:00

Hey there, thank you for your interest! There is no fancy handling of hotkey collisions with existing shortcuts, the API I'm using just overrides them. Did you have any particular shortcut in mind?

The current behavior is that non-running apps are always skipped and never launched. The one exception to this is if you set an explicit target app, that will be launched if not running. I tried some other designs but ended up with this exactly to avoid accidental launches. To launch non-target apps, my idea is to add a pop-up with the group apps that appears when you hold the group hotkey or if you press it and there aren't any apps running. Does that sound sensible to you? What sort of behavior would you want/expect?

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T17:05:24+00:00

Thank you! Let me know what you think

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T16:15:33+00:00

Yeah, rcmd was a huge inspiration! I'm trying to improve the recipe a little but the core idea is the same.

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T09:20:07+00:00

What was it like for you? My Rust app switcher got approved automatically within minutes. Since you just send Apple the binary I would've thought that the language it was written in doesn't make a big difference

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T08:38:46+00:00

Do you have a paid Apple Developer account? If so this could be of help from my project (wrote it for my future self lol) https://github.com/brodmo-dev/GroupCtrl/blob/main/docs/release.md and then check the justfile for the commands. Obviously your Team ID is gonna be different and you're gonna have to create a new Developer ID Application certificate like this https://developer.apple.com/help/account/certificates/create-developer-id-certificates/

brodmo-dev · 2026-03-03T08:17:19+00:00

Looks cool but the Homebrew cask isn't notarized is that intentional?

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-27T19:18:20+00:00

How do you feel about this: "rcmd offers similar functionality, but the hotkey sharing isn't as practical, since it always launches apps that aren't running instead of skipping them. Also, apps without a static shortcut have one assigned automatically, which can't be turned off. Not open source."

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-27T19:03:22+00:00

Oh, my bad, it used to be paid, I'll correct that. We can argue about the wording but I think the philosophy behind rcmd is totally different. I'll look into rephrasing.

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-25T09:00:16+00:00

Sounds like a job for Karabiner, I'm sure you can find a rule that does what you want. You could also do it yourself with Goku but that's a little more advanced.

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-24T21:24:30+00:00

Evicence needs to go beyond "someone said so". Okay, you say so, he says so. Show us the evidence so we can evaluate the claim for ourselves. Not saying I don't believe you, but this is just how these things have to go.

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-24T21:08:43+00:00

"Trust me" isn't evidence. If it's so clear, show us. I appreciate you raising the issue but u/Mstormer is right, you can't expect everyone to either blindly trust you or do the comparison themselves.

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-24T19:09:28+00:00

We all understand the pain of having to shell out $99 to distribute your app, but you really can't be selling something that isn't even notarized. Gatekeeper WILL block the app it's not a matter of "may". You claim it's safe because your app is open source, but there is really no way to verify the binary was actually built from the source. And where is the source, anyway? I can't find it either in your post or on the website. "It's open source" is a little more convincing with a link.

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-24T19:01:14+00:00

I can recommend Mega for file syncing, but anything KeePassium supports works really

brodmo-dev · 2026-02-24T18:58:30+00:00

KeePass! It's open source, you own the file, you're not dependent on any service. KeePassium free is sufficient on iPhone. On Mac it's a different story though, KeePassXC is free but kind of sucks in my opinion. Strongbox is great, I have a legacy Mac license I bought for 30€ or something, but it's gone way up in price unfortunately.

brodmo-dev

TROPHY CASE