LightSelect 2.0

A lightweight native macOS extraction of Cherry Studio's selection assistant. LightSelect directly reuses the pinned Cherry Studio selection toolbar, action window, settings components, icons, dimensions, and theme tokens while keeping the application process native Swift/AppKit. The reused React UI runs in the system WKWebView; Electron and the rest of Cherry Studio are not bundled.

Select text in another app and LightSelect shows a small floating toolbar near the mouse:

• Translate: opens a local reading panel and asks your configured OpenAI-compatible API.
• Explain: opens the same local reading panel with an explanation prompt.
• Summary: opens the same local reading panel with a summary prompt.
• Search: opens Google search.
• Copy: copies the selected text.
• Quote: copies the selected text as Markdown quote text.

The action panel is a floating Cherry-style window with streaming output, copy, cancel, regenerate, pin, opacity, and appearance support. The settings center has General, Actions, API, App Filter, and About destinations plus a runtime Chinese/English switch. It controls compact mode, trigger mode, application filters, toolbar actions, custom prompts, follow behavior, auto-close, and auto-pin.

Architecture

• Swift/AppKit owns the menu bar lifecycle, Accessibility permission, windows, settings persistence, and OpenAI-compatible streaming.
• A native C ABI adapter wraps the pinned selection-hook macOS implementation, including Accessibility selection reads and clipboard fallback restoration.
• Three Vite entries under Web/ adapt the pinned Cherry Studio toolbar, action window, and selection settings to a typed native/WebKit bridge.
• Vendor/ and NOTICE record the exact upstream commits, licenses, copied paths, and local adaptations. Run scripts/verify-provenance.sh to verify them.

Run

cd Web
npm ci
npm run build
cd ..
swift run

On first launch, grant Accessibility permission in System Settings, then restart LightSelect.

Build a Release Binary

swift build -c release

The binary will be at:

.build/release/LightSelect

Build an App Bundle

chmod +x scripts/build-app.sh
scripts/build-app.sh
open build/LightSelect.app

If macOS asks for permission, grant Accessibility access to LightSelect.app, then quit and reopen it.

To keep it around as a normal local app:

mkdir -p ~/Applications
cp -R build/LightSelect.app ~/Applications/
open ~/Applications/LightSelect.app

For later updates, prefer:

chmod +x scripts/install-update.sh
scripts/install-update.sh

Grant Accessibility permission to this fixed app path:

~/Applications/LightSelect.app

LightSelect is signed with the local identity LightSelect Stable Code Signing when available. That keeps the bundle identity stable across updates, so Accessibility permission should not need to be granted again after every code change. If the app was previously authorized while ad-hoc signed, remove the old LightSelect entry and authorize this stable-signed app once.

If selecting text in a browser does not show the toolbar, click the page once, select the text again, and check that LightSelect.app is enabled in Accessibility. LightSelect first tries the app's Accessibility selected-text API, then falls back to a temporary Cmd+C read and restores the previous clipboard.

API Settings

Use the LightSelect menu bar icon -> Selection Settings... for selection behavior and actions, or choose API Settings... to open the API section directly.

LightSelect calls an OpenAI-compatible endpoint:

POST {Base URL}/chat/completions
Authorization: Bearer {API Key}

The API page can fetch available models and test the connection inline. Model discovery requires the provider to implement an OpenAI-compatible GET /models endpoint; manual model entry remains available when it does not. Timeout is in Advanced Settings, and provider errors are shown locally without exposing response bodies.

Settings remain local in macOS UserDefaults and the API key is stored in macOS Keychain. The native bridge sends only whether a stored key exists, never the stored key itself. Do not commit real API keys; this repository does not include any user key.

Standard macOS editing shortcuts work in the settings window: Command-Z, Command-Shift-Z, Command-X, Command-C, Command-V, and Command-A. Control-V is also accepted as a window-local paste alias.

For deterministic local API testing without using an external provider, run:

node scripts/mock-openai-server.mjs

Use http://127.0.0.1:18431/success/v1 for the success path. The same server also provides auth, forbidden, rate, server, malformed, empty, and slow base-path variants under http://127.0.0.1:18431/<variant>/v1.

Upstream Attribution

LightSelect 2.0 contains adapted selection-assistant source code from Cherry Studio at the commit recorded in Vendor/CherryStudioSelection/UPSTREAM.md and native selection code from selection-hook at the commit recorded in Vendor/SelectionHookNative/UPSTREAM.md.

Cherry Studio: https://github.com/CherryHQ/cherry-studio

selection-hook: https://github.com/0xfullex/selection-hook

This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or maintained by Cherry Studio, CherryHQ, or selection-hook's maintainers. See NOTICE for attribution and adaptation details.

License

AGPL-3.0. See LICENSE.