Mac Application Launcher

Launch macOS applications by voice

NOTE: This skill only works on macOS systems!

About

Launch applications on macOS using voice commands through OVOS (Open Voice OS).

The skill automatically discovers applications by scanning standard macOS application directories and parsing .app bundles to extract application metadata including names, bundle identifiers, and versions.

Scanned directories:

• /Applications
• /System/Applications
• /Applications/Utilities
• /System/Library/CoreServices
• /System/Applications/Utilities
• ~/Applications

Examples

• "Open Safari"
• "Launch Calculator"
• "Close Terminal"
• "Switch to Finder"

Application Management

The skill provides comprehensive application management:

• Launch: Start applications that aren't running
• Switch: Bring running applications to the foreground
• Close: Gracefully quit applications using AppleScript, falling back to process termination if needed
• Status: Check if applications are currently running

The skill prioritizes graceful application closure using AppleScript's quit commands, which allows applications to save their state properly. If AppleScript fails, it falls back to process termination.

Configuration via settings.json

Customize the Application Launcher skill behavior by modifying these options in settings.json:

Option	Type	Default Value	Description
aliases	Dict[str, List[str]]	{}	Application aliases. Map app names to speech-friendly alternatives (e.g., {"Calculator": ["calc"]})
user_commands	Dict[str, str]	{}	Custom application paths. Map app names to specific .app bundle paths
thresh	float	0.85	Fuzzy matching threshold for application names. Lower values allow more lenient matches
blocklist	List[str]	[]	Applications to exclude from voice control
extra_langs	List[str]	["en-US"]	Additional language codes for intent matching
disable_window_manager	bool	False	If True, disables AppleScript-based window management
terminate_all	bool	False	If True, terminates all matching processes when closing applications

Example configuration:

{
  "aliases": {
    "Calculator": ["calc", "calculator"],
    "Safari": ["browser", "web browser"],
    "Terminal": ["term", "console"]
  },
  "thresh": 0.85,
  "blocklist": ["System Preferences"],
  "terminate_all": false
}

Installation

Install from PyPI:

pip install skill-mac-application-launcher

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/OscillateLabsLLC/skill-mac-application-launcher
cd skill-mac-application-launcher
pip install .

Development

Note: This project is in Security Fixes Only status. We accept security fixes and critical bug fixes, but not new features.

For development, install with dev dependencies:

pip install -e .[dev]

Run tests:

pytest

Run type checking:

mypy skill_mac_application_launcher/

Run linting:

ruff check skill_mac_application_launcher/ tests/

See CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed development guidelines.

Category

Productivity

Tags

#macos #application-launcher #voice-control #ovos