Plugins and the Plugin Store

Kepler now has a built-in plugin store. You can search for plugins, install them with one click, and use them immediately. Global hotkeys provided by plugins work as soon as the installation finishes.

How it works

Plugins are regular npm packages. The store itself is a curated list of approved packages. Kepler loads that list, then checks npm for the latest version, description, and package download.

The catalog is cached locally, so you can still open the store while offline. Kepler will simply warn you that the list may not be up to date.

Before installing a package, Kepler verifies its SHA-512 checksum against the value published by npm. It also rejects archives containing symlinks, unsafe paths, or files that exceed the configured size limits.

Kepler only extracts the files it actually needs: the plugin manifest and its entry point.

Installs and updates are atomic. Kepler keeps the previous version until the new one has loaded successfully. If the update fails or crashes halfway through, the previous version is restored.

Updates that request additional permissions or network access require approval. Other updates can be applied automatically.

Later

• Install plugins directly from Git repositories without publishing them to npm
• Browse plugins and screenshots on the Kepler website
• Install plugins from the website with one click

Added

• Plugin Store: Browse and install plugins without leaving Kepler.
• Delta Updates: Kepler now downloads only the parts of an update that changed.

Changed

• Menu Bar Interaction: Left-clicking the menu bar icon opens its menu. Right-clicking opens Kepler.
• Search Ranking: Exact matches now rank above fuzzy matches.
• Space Switching: Kepler remains on the Space where it was opened instead of following you when switching Spaces.
• Licensing: Kepler now uses the new licence server and verifies licence checks end to end. This should reduce incorrect “unlicensed” states on unstable connections.

Fixed

• Crash when connecting or disconnecting a dock: Rebuilding the menu bar after a display change could cause Kepler to quit without showing an error.
• Launcher position after a display change: Kepler no longer tries to open on a disconnected display or gets stuck outside the visible screen area.
• Wick wake-up behaviour: Kepler no longer activates Wick while Wick is not active.

Kepler x Wick

What Wick is?

Wick is a beautifully designed clock app for Mac with timers, stopwatches, and alarms integrated into the menu bar and lock screen. Wick is made by Nate

Takeaway from this

Going forward, this is the way I want to do Kepler. Integrating with other apps to build a better experience, rather than trying to replace existing apps.

Added

• support for timers using the Wick app
• button to turn on advanced logging for 24h

Changed

• removed integration with native clock
• improved logging for better error debugging

Fixed

• favorite reordering not working
• closing Kepler via menubar Quit action not working

Added

• Clock plugin (first iteration)
  • support for timers in lookahead

Fixed

• Favorites disappeared when using arrow key down to expand Kepler when in compact mode.

Expanded View

Expanded View keeps Kepler open at full height. This update also introduces favorites, which appear in Expanded View whenever the list is empty.

Notes

• Your first ten favorites automatically get keyboard shortcuts, + 0-9
• Use the Actions Bar to reorder favorites up or down the list.
• Pressing arrow down will expand the compact view for the current open session.
• In the normal view, favorites are boosted to the top of your search results.

Added

• Indicator when using a Bang without a query
• Support for tinted, transparent, and dark mode icons
• Expanded View
• favorites
• a smooth end animation for the LookAhead marquee effect

Changed

• The LookAhead animation now also triggers when using Tab
• update popup can now render markdown

Fixed

• Some Apple apps, like Time Machine, not showing up

Added

Popup Notification for Uppers. Also exposed to plugins (#49)

Changed

• Improved handling for non-URL text in URL-like fields (#28)
• Refined action bar hover behavior for consistency (#33)
• Increased button click targets (#32)
• Improved enter glyph sizing (#35)
• Improved icon contrast in the UI (#45)
• Adjusted click feedback to feel more native (#46)
• Disabled hover animations on disabled plugin shortcuts in settings (#43)
• Improved overflow handling for the “Open” label in search input (#40)

Fixed

• Settings no longer render in two separate sections (#29)
• Settings entries now have readable contrast (#24)
• Double hover effect on arrow-key navigation removed (#33)
• Auto-scroll behavior removed for accessibility (#25)
• Right-click and context menu behavior fixed (#47)
• Top element no longer flashes when pressing Enter (#34)

Bangs

Bangs let you search faster by jumping directly into sites like Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, GitHub, and more.

You can also define your own custom bangs in Settings to search the sites you use most.

Coffee / Uppies

For late-night sessions, long downloads, presentations, or anything that needs to stay awake:

Mac Awake vs. Display Awake

Keep Mac Awake prevents your Mac from going to sleep while idle, while still allowing the display to turn off normally.

Keep Display Awake keeps both your display and your Mac awake. This is useful for presentations, monitoring, downloads, or anything you want to keep visible.

Added

• Added Bangs
• Added Coffee / Uppies to keep your Mac or display awake
• Added Actions Bar
  • Reset the rank of a specific entry
  • Increase or decrease an entry’s global rank
• Added system Sleep action

Changed

• Improved Lookahead gestures
• Started improving the settings page

Fixed

• Fixed an issue where currency conversions could sometimes be handled by the Expressions plugin

Added

• Option to use any OpenAI compatible API.
• Option to use any model from Hugging Face.
• Option to define a custom placeholder in searchbar (available to plugins)
• Shortcut to directly open selected text in spellcheck view.
• System Action Native Plugin
  • Lockscreen
  • Logout
  • Shutdown
  • Restart
• Option to clear clipboard history (keeping pinned entries).

Changed

• Marquee effect on long lookahead titles now starts when the card is hovered on for 1 seconds.
• Default Local LLM Model is now bartowski/google_gemma-3n-E4B-it-GGUF instead of Qwen/Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct-GGUF
• Lookahead for calendar now shows 17:00 instead of 17.
• Lookahead for weather now shows H/L instead of High/Low.
• Lookahead for calendar now shows + x more when there are more events starting at the same time.

Fixed

• Lookahead for calendar time separation incorrect.

AI Spellcheck

This update adds AI-powered spell checking. It’s free, runs on-device, and works fully offline. To get started, download the model (currently Qwen-2.5-3B-Instruct) under Features > Spellcheck in settings.

How to use

Highlight a sentence in your input field, open Kepler, then run the Spellcheck action or type /spell to jump straight to it. Once the check finishes, errors show up with green highlights. Press to drop the corrected text in at the cursor.

What’s next

The next update lets you pick any model from HuggingFace, so if you’ve got a more powerful machine you can run a bigger model. I’m also adding support for API keys (like OpenRouter) for when you’d rather not run the model locally.

Added

• Added Active App Indicators with context menu actions to Quit or Force Quit running applications directly from Kepler
• Added AI-powered inline spell checking
• Added KeplerSystem integration, bringing a dedicated Kepler Settings entry to search and native LookAhead update notifications
• Added a manual action to check for updates

Changed

• Migrated Kepler fully to the latest version of Clave for faster license verification and background update handling
• Refined LookAhead UI to gracefully handle long event titles and prevent truncated times by using more compact time formats
• Improved context menu placement

Fixed

• Fixed a bug where the search index would not recognize “Visual” for Visual Studio Code (example)
• Fixed a bug where the search engine input field would fail to update upon selecting an item
• Fixed a liquid glass bug causing the toolbar and “back to top” button having different maerials

Added

• Added a quick actions toolbar at the bottom of the list.
• The panel now expands to full height, even when there are no apps to show.
• Logging for important errors

Changed

• Refined the Liquid Glass appearance. Thanks, Nate.
• LookAhead now uses a glassy design.
• Moved the LookAhead indicator dots inside the card.
• LookAhead now scrolls only the text instead of the entire card.
• Improve weather integration for LookAhead to make it more useful.
• Improved calendar integration settings.

Fixed

• Fixed Liquid Glass adapting to the background color.
• Fixed app indexing for apps inside subfolders of /Applications and ~/Applications.
• Fixed scaling issues with plugin-provided icons.
• Improved padding in widget cards.
• Improved padding around section titles.
• Some settings icons missing.

Information

Kepler now uses Clave for updates. Until now, Clave only handled licensing.

Fixed

• Entering the first letter caused slow feeling

Added

• Added a Back to Top button in the clipboard gallery.
• Added + and + to quickly jump between result sections.
• Added support for quitting applications directly from Kepler.
• Added support for finding entries from macOS System Settings.
• Added option to disable the active plugin row under Settings > Appearance

Changed

• Redesigned the Settings menu to better match macOS System Settings.
• Set Google as the default search engine for the Web Search plugin.
• Made cycling through LookAhead results feel smoother.
• Copying text that already exists in the clipboard history now moves it back to the front of the gallery.
• Improved padding and spacing consistency across the app.

Fixed

• Removed debounce that caused searches to feel delayed.
• Fixed the alignment of “Open”.
• Pressing Tab to cycle through LookAhead no longer triggers haptics.
• PluginHost now automatically recovers after a crash. We are still investigating the root cause.
• Fixed inline autocomplete not updating correctly when navigating with the arrow keys.
• Fixed incorrect limits on the maximum clipboard item count.

Known Bugs

• The Kepler panel glass can sometimes appear dark when placed in front of a dark background, even when the system is in light mode. We are working on a fix.

Plugins

Kepler 0.5.0 introduces the first version of the new plugin system for community plugins.

This is still an early release, so you may run into bugs or rough edges. If you want to get started, take a look at the Plugin SDK. We are aiming for plugins to basically have all options, that everything in Kepler has too.

We also created a few example plugins:

• GitHub Issues: A basic plugin that shows an overview of your GitHub issues.
• Klack: A plugin for the awesome Klack app.
• Their Time: A plugin that shows the local time of your peers.

There are already some community plugins by the awesome Flxw:

• Chess Openings: Browse chess openings directly from Kepler.
• Dictionary: Look up word definitions from online dictionaries.

Going further

Plugins are still quite basic, and installation is more manual than we would like. In the future, we plan to add a plugin store so users can easily discover, download, share, and review plugins for Kepler.

A more detailed blog post about plugins is also in the works.

Clipboard

Kepler now includes a built-in clipboard manager. It shows your recent clipboard history in a gallery-style view, making it easy to browse copied text, images, and snippets.

You can open the clipboard by typing clip or by using the default shortcut + ⇧ + V .

Notable Features

• Pinning: Pin important clipboard entries to keep them at the top. Pinned entries are not removed when the clipboard reaches its size limit, which is 200 items by default. Use + P to pin an entry.
• Multi-select and insert: Use + S to select multiple clipboard entries. Press to insert all selected entries into the previously focused window.

Added

• Plugins and Plugin SDK
• Built-in clipboard manager
• Gallery-style view for clipboard entries and plugins
• Drag and drop support for File Search results
• Web Search plugin
• AppleScript execution support, including support for plugins
• Weather plugin in Lookahead

Changed

• Completely redesigned the settings UI
• Improved Lookahead settings
• Resolved views, such as translations and conversions, are now shown inline alongside other results instead of taking over the whole view
• Rewrote AppIndex/FileIndex in Swift

Fixed

• License settings now show the masked email instead of unknown
• Fixed padding issues around the app
• Fixed incorrect icon sizes

Known Bugs

• The Kepler panel glass can sometimes appear dark when placed in front of a dark background, even if the system is in light mode. We are working on a fix.

Kepler Update

This update brings mostly bug fixes.

Detailed Changelog

Added

• Option to select if the launcher starts on the main or active screen.
• Safe area around the screen edges to prevent the launcher from being dragged off-screen.

Changed

• Preview now uses the toggle option by default.
• Built-in plugins no longer show the plugin header.
• Launcher can now be dragged anywhere except the text area.

Fixed

• Preview window losing focus.
• Preview window opening on a different screen than the panel.
• File Search now allows direct paths like ~/Downloads/.

Kepler Update

This update brings bug fixes and the real liquid glass experience.

I want to express my special thanks to Nate for helping me in bringing the custom variant of Liquid Glass to life.

This update mostly reimplements features of 0.4.5 and moves a step forward in the direction of plugin support.

Detailed Changelog

Added

• New custom liquid glass variant

Fixed

• Window position is now saved relatively and will persist across differnt screen sizes.

Kepler Update

This update brings bug fixes and the true liquid glass experience.

Detailed Changelog

Added

• File Search plugin can now be activated via /f to allow faster file search.

Changed

• Adapted the real liquid glass look for macOS 26
• Removed the activate plugin pill (ActivePill) in favor of a sleeker bar.
• Native Plugins/Features no longer have the plugin header with Author and Version
• Improved dragging:
  • Better Haptic Feedback
  • Better indication for snapping to the guidelines

Fixed

• LookAhead now shows the date when an event is not on the same day.
• Typos in settings
• Aligned item sizes
• Padding is now even and just perfect.

This update brings major performance improvements, a smaller launcher window, and two big new integrations: File Search and Expression Evaluation.

File Search

Kepler can now search your files directly from the launcher.

Important: File Search must be enabled first in Settings > File Search.

You can open File Search by typing file search in Kepler, or by assigning it as your default shortcut under Settings > Shortcuts.

By default, Kepler only indexes ~/Documents. You can add more folders in the File Search settings. You can also exclude files or directories you do not want indexed. Regex patterns are supported.

Kepler includes sensible defaults to avoid indexing heavy folders like node_modules and .git.

Expressions

Kepler now integrates the excellent Soulver Core, allowing you to evaluate expressions directly in the launcher.

From basic calculations to complex equations, unit conversions, and date/time calculations - just start typing and Kepler will show the result.

Aliases

Aliases let you launch your favorite apps even faster.

They work like shortcuts on top of Kepler’s fuzzy search and can be configured in Settings > Search.

Detailed Changelog

Added

• File Search plugin
• Expressions plugin powered by Soulver Core
• Search aliases
• Option to enable or disable the expand animation
• Ability to drag the Kepler window and snap it back to the default position using guidelines
• Settings for default input and output languages in Translation

Changed

• Migrated to a custom keyboard shortcut implementation for better UI integration
• Improved the License page UI
• Made the Kepler launcher window much smaller
• Separated settings for each plugin and feature

Fixed

• Fixed jumping border radius when entering the first character
• Fixed separated background appearance in Settings