ThorReborn
A menu-bar app for macOS that switches to apps with global keyboard shortcuts. Press an app's shortcut to launch or activate it; press it again while that app is frontmost to hide it.
ThorReborn is a from-scratch rewrite of Thor by Alvin Zhu (MIT license). It aims for full functional parity, built with Swift 6, SwiftUI, Swift Package Manager, KeyboardShortcuts and Sparkle 2. It drops Thor's CocoaPods setup, storyboards, MASShortcut, and LaunchAtLogin helper app. It reads and writes Thor's apps.json format, so you can import an export from the original.
Download
Grab the DMG for your Mac from the latest release (Apple Silicon: ThorReborn-<version>-aarch64.dmg, Intel: ThorReborn-<version>-x86_64.dmg), open it, and drag ThorReborn to Applications. Website: https://marclundgren.github.io/thor-reborn/
Or with Homebrew:
brew install --cask marclundgren/thor-reborn/thorreborn
Release builds are signed with a self-signed certificate rather than an Apple Developer ID, and not notarized, so macOS blocks the first launch. Open the app once, then click Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security. Or run:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/ThorReborn.app
From 1.1.1 on, ThorReborn updates itself through Sparkle (Check for Updates in the menu, or automatic checks you can turn on in Settings). Version 1.0.0 shipped with a placeholder feed, so 1.0.0 users need to download a newer version by hand once.
Features
- Runs from the menu bar only (no Dock icon). The menu has: Show Apps, Enable/Disable Shortcuts, Export/Import Shortcuts, Check for Updates, the version, Privacy Policy, and Quit.
- Main window with one row per app (36×36 icon, name, shortcut recorder). You can drag rows to reorder them. To delete, swipe, use the − button, the Delete key, or the context menu.
- An app picker that finds apps in
/Applications, /System/Applications, ~/Applications, and through Spotlight (kMDItemContentType == "com.apple.application-bundle"), and filters as you type.
- Conflict detection. Recording a shortcut that another row already uses asks before moving it. The menu bar toggle hotkey can't be assigned at all.
- A global switch to enable or disable all shortcuts.
- An optional deactivate key: double-press Shift, Control, Option or Command to pause all shortcuts. They come back on their own after 0.1–2.0 s (0.3 s by default).
- ⇧⌃⌥⌘T shows or hides the menu bar icon. You can turn this hotkey off in Settings.
- Launch at login through
SMAppService.
- JSON export and import (the default file name is
thor_shortcuts.json).
Build and run
Requirements: Xcode 16 or later (built and tested with Xcode 27.1). The app runs on macOS 14 or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel.
In Xcode: open ThorReborn.xcodeproj, pick the ThorReborn scheme, and press ⌘R. Xcode fetches the Swift packages on first open.
From the command line:
xcodebuild -scheme ThorReborn -destination 'platform=macOS' build
open ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ThorReborn-*/Build/Products/Debug/ThorReborn.app
# Universal (arm64 + x86_64) release build
xcodebuild -scheme ThorReborn -configuration Release -destination 'generic/platform=macOS' build
If xcodebuild says the active developer directory is the Command Line Tools, run sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer, or prefix commands with DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer.
Tests
The unit tests use Swift Testing. They cover round-trips of shortcut strings and of store save/load and export/import. They live in the ThorRebornCore package and run either way:
cd Packages/ThorRebornCore && swift test # SwiftPM
xcodebuild -scheme ThorReborn -destination 'platform=macOS' test # Xcode (ThorRebornCoreTests target)
Debug builds also contain an end-to-end self-test that drives the real services. It assigns ⇧⌘G to Calculator, launches, hides and reactivates it, disables and re-enables shortcuts, double-presses the deactivate key, toggles launch at login, and runs export, delete-all and import. It checks hotkey registration directly against Carbon. It runs against a temporary apps.json and a separate defaults suite, so your real data is never touched:
open -n path/to/Debug/ThorReborn.app --args --self-test /tmp/thor-selftest.txt
Two more Debug-only modes use the same sandbox:
--screenshots <dir> renders the main window (Apps and Settings tabs, light and dark) with sample apps into PNGs. docs/screenshot-*.png come from this.--update-test <report> runs a real Sparkle update against the live feed with a headless user interface that accepts everything, and logs each step. Run it on a copy of an older build; Sparkle replaces that copy in place.
Permissions
| Permission | Why |
|---|
| Accessibility (Privacy & Security › Accessibility) | Needed to watch modifier keys while other apps are in front, which the deactivate-key double-press depends on. On first launch, ThorReborn shows a screen explaining this, with a button that opens the right System Settings pane. If you revoke the permission while the app is running, that screen comes back. The app shortcuts themselves are Carbon hot keys and keep working without it. |
| Login Items | Only if you turn on Launch at login. macOS may ask you to approve ThorReborn under General › Login Items. |
Rebuilding and Accessibility. Local builds are ad-hoc signed ("Sign to Run Locally"). macOS stores the grant against the binary's exact hash, so every rebuild produces an app the existing grant doesn't cover. The list still shows ThorReborn as on, but that entry belongs to the old build, and the onboarding screen reappears. To fix it:
以上為 README 的開頭部分。其餘內容請閱讀原文。 檢視完整 README ↗
