Open Any App With a Keyboard Shortcut on Mac

Third-party launchers are great, but macOS can already do the one thing most people install them for: press a key combo, get an app. The built-in Shortcuts app assigns global hotkeys to anything it can run — including a one-action shortcut that just opens an app. Setup takes about a minute per app.

Build the shortcut

1. Open the Shortcuts app (it ships with macOS — find it with Spotlight).
2. Click + to create a new shortcut.
3. In the action search on the right, type Open App and double-click the action to add it.
4. In the action, click the dimmed App and choose your app — say, Notes.
5. Name the shortcut something obvious (“Open Notes”) at the top.

That's the whole program: one action. Now give it keys:

1. Click the ⓘ info button in the toolbar and switch to the Details tab.
2. Click Add Keyboard Shortcut and press your combo, e.g. Ctrl+Option+Cmd+N.
3. Close the shortcut. Done — the hotkey works system-wide, whatever app is in front.

Pressing the combo launches the app; if it's already running, it comes to the front instead. That “launch-or-focus” behavior is exactly what makes hotkey launching addictive — one keystroke always means “put Notes in front of me”, cold start or not.

To undo: reopen the shortcut's Details tab, click into the recorded shortcut and delete it — or delete the whole shortcut from the library.

Picking combos that never clash

The failure mode here is choosing keys some app already uses — your hotkey then hijacks a real command. Two conventions avoid it entirely:

• Ctrl+Option+Cmd + a letter. Almost no Mac app binds three-modifier combos, so Ctrl+Option+Cmd+B for the browser, +T for Terminal, +N for Notes are effectively yours forever. The three modifiers sit in a row, so it's one comfortable claw with the left hand.
• Function keys. F1–F12 (with Fn if your function keys control brightness and volume) are mostly free — though a few have system defaults like Mission Control on F3, so test first.

Stay away from single-modifier combos (Cmd+letter is app territory) and anything listed in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts.

Repeat for your top apps — then go further

Most people need five or six of these: browser, terminal or editor, notes, mail, calendar, chat. Duplicate the shortcut (Cmd+D in the library), swap the app and the hotkey, and you've built a launcher in five minutes.

And because it's Shortcuts, the hotkey doesn't have to stop at opening one app. The same recipe can open several apps at once (add more Open App actions — one combo sets up your whole writing or coding context), open a specific file or folder, or open an app and start a timer. The one-action version is just the gateway.

This works on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia alike. The only quirk to know: hotkeys are tied to the shortcut, so renaming or deleting the shortcut takes the hotkey with it.

Two bonus launch routes come free with the same shortcuts. They appear in Spotlight — type the shortcut's name and press Return, no hotkey needed — which is a nice fallback for the apps that didn't earn a dedicated combo. And in each shortcut's Details tab you can also tick Pin in Menu Bar, putting a Shortcuts icon in the menu bar with your launchers one click away. Between hotkey, Spotlight, and menu bar, the built-in tooling covers most of what a paid launcher does for this job.

New to Shortcuts?

If this was your first shortcut, the app can do far more than launching things — start with Shortcuts on Mac: a beginner's guide to see what else one hotkey can trigger.