ClingLite

A memory-optimized, native macOS instant fuzzy file finder — a Spotlight/Alfred-style search panel that finds files across your disk in milliseconds while staying lightweight.

ClingLite is a from-scratch reimplementation of Cling with one overriding goal: a hard memory ceiling of <500MB regardless of filesystem size, where the original can use 1GB+. It is built with the macOS Command Line Tools only — no Xcode required — and has zero external dependencies in its engine.

Highlights

• Fast fuzzy search — fzf-style scoring over a memory-mapped index; sub-100ms searches.
• Tiny memory footprint — the index is memory-mapped and searched in place (clean, OS-evictable pages), so resident memory stays low. Real ~/Documents (151k files): ~23MB while searching; a synthetic 2M-file index: ~80–100MB total / ~65ms per search.
• Menu-bar agent — summon a borderless search panel with a global hotkey (⌥Space).
• Rich preview pane — scrollable PDF (PDFKit), large image, or QuickLook thumbnail, plus Name / Path / Size / Date Modified.
• Keyboard-first — ↩ open, ⌘↩ reveal, ⌘Y Quick Look, ⌘T open in Terminal, ⌘R rename, ⌘C copy path, ⌘A select-all, arrows to navigate.
• Live updates — FSEvents keeps the index current; background reindexing.
• CLI — cling index <root> <out.idx> and cling search <out.idx> <query…>.

Build & run

Requires macOS 14+ and the Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install). No Xcode.

# Run the test suite
./scripts/test.sh                 # debug
./scripts/test.sh -c release      # release (includes the memory-ceiling harness)

# Build the .app bundle (menu-bar agent)
./scripts/build-app.sh
open ClingLite.app                # then press ⌥Space to summon the panel

# Or use the CLI
swift build -c release
.build/release/cling index "$HOME" /tmp/home.idx
.build/release/cling search /tmp/home.idx report

Architecture

• Sources/ClingCore/ — the headless, fully-tested engine: memory-mapped structure-of-arrays index (format / writer / in-place reader), the ported fuzzy scorer, the fts(3) indexer, multi-root SearchService, persistent IndexStore, and base+delta LiveIndex.
• Sources/ClingApp/ — the SwiftUI + AppKit menu-bar app (hotkey, panel, preview, actions, settings, FSEvents wiring).
• Sources/cling/ — the command-line tool.

See STATUS.md for the detailed build log and verified numbers.

License & attribution

ClingLite is licensed under GPL-3.0 (see LICENSE). Its fuzzy-scoring core is ported from Cling (GPL-3.0); everything else is original. See NOTICE.md for full provenance. Not affiliated with FuzzyIdeas.