Raycast, Alfred, Spotlight — and now whatever this is: a launcher with the AI locked inside your Mac

Every launcher race has the same shape. Spotlight ships with the Mac and does 60%. Alfred makes you pay for the other 30%. Raycast gets you to 95% and then puts the AI behind a cloud subscription, because the good models live in a datacenter.

I wanted the last 5% without the datacenter. So HocusFocus is a launcher for macOS 26 with the AI running on-device — Apple's private on-device model, the one that never leaves your Mac. You press Alt Space and type the way you'd talk: "why is the sky blue", "its too loud in here, turn it down a bit", "time in tokyo". Plain English in, actions and answers out.

The boring half still does the boring half well: apps open instantly, math and currency conversions compute inline while you type, clipboard history and notes are one tab away, timers and themes exist because people asked.

A few honest notes for the launcher shoppers:

If you've been paying monthly for launcher AI that just proxies a cloud model, the calculus here is different: same convenience, the model never leaves the machine, and it costs less than one month of the subscription.

https://www.hocusfocusmac.com/?utm_source=devto&utm_campaign=hocusfocus-launch

Happy to answer anything about the on-device integration or the launcher plumbing.