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Orbital for macOS VS ShellNewHandler

Compare Orbital for macOS VS ShellNewHandler and see what are their differences

Orbital for macOS

Orbital is the radial launcher for macOS. Click your middle mouse button — or hold ⌥ Space — and a dial of windows, apps, clipboard, and actions blooms at your cursor. Free 7-day trial, €9.99 once.

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Paid Free trial €9.99 / One-off (2 Macs, one-time)
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Alternatives Is it good?
ShellNewHandler

SourceForge.net: ShellNewHandler details page

Rating
0 reviews
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Alternatives Is it good?
ZeroTwo AI
ZeroTwo is a premium multi-provider AI platform which combines the tools models and features of Claude, Gemini, Grok, Openai and more into one. Canvas, Deep Research, MCP, Connectors, Agents, Projects and even Apps are all available in one place! sponsored
Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, ShellNewHandler seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 2 times since March 2021.

social mentions
0 vs 2
Productivity popularity
100% vs 0%

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Orbital for macOS
ShellNewHandler
Website orbital.theappstudio.net sourceforge.net
Pricing
Paid Free trial €9.99 / One-off (2 Macs, one-time) Official pricing
—
Platforms
MacOS macOS 15
—
Company Startup from Germany · 1 - 9 employees · 2026 —
Listed in
App Launcher Productivity Mac Utilities Mac OS & Utilities +2
Cloud Storage Monitoring Tools File Sharing Website Monitoring +1

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

Orbital for macOS
ShellNewHandler

No analysis of Orbital for macOS yet.

Overall verdict

  • ShellNewHandler is a niche, lightweight utility hosted on SourceForge designed to give users more control over the Windows 'New' context menu (the ShellNew menu). It can be considered good for its specific narrow use case, but it is an older, minimally maintained tool that may not suit all users, especially those on modern Windows versions.

Why this product is good

  • Provides direct control over customizing the Windows right-click 'New' menu, allowing users to add or remove file type entries
  • Lightweight and free, without bundled bloatware typical of some other free utilities
  • Simple and focused in scope, making it easy to understand for its specific purpose
  • Open distribution via SourceForge allows transparency and no-cost access

Recommended for

  • Power users who want to declutter or customize the Windows New context menu
  • IT administrators managing standardized desktop environments across multiple machines
  • Users comfortable with older utility-style tools and Windows registry-related tweaks
  • Not recommended for casual users seeking modern, actively supported software with regular updates

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Orbital for macOS
ShellNewHandler
100% 100%
Productivity
0% 0%
0% 0%
File Sharing
100% 100%
100% 100%
App Launcher
0% 0%
0% 0%
Cloud Storage
100% 100%

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Orbital for macOS and ShellNewHandler.

What makes your product unique?

Orbital for macOS's answer

Orbital is the only Mac launcher built mouse-first. Instead of a command palette in the middle of the screen, a middle click opens a radial dial at the cursor with six sections: pinned apps, open windows, clipboard history, saved workspaces, recent files, and system actions. One flick of the mouse launches, switches, or snaps — jobs that normally need three or four separate utilities. It requires a single Accessibility permission, no account, and collects no analytics.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Orbital for macOS's answer

Raycast, Alfred, and LaunchBar are keyboard command palettes — excellent when your hands are typing, but most Mac time is spent with one hand on the mouse. Orbital puts launching, window switching, layout restore, and clipboard history one middle click away, exactly where the cursor already is. Compared with radial tools like Charmstone, it goes further than app switching: it snaps windows, restores complete window setups, and keeps an encrypted on-device clipboard history. And it's a €9.99 one-time purchase with a 7-day trial — not a subscription.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Orbital for macOS's answer

Mac users whose hand lives on the mouse or trackpad: designers, developers, and anyone juggling many windows and apps through the day. It also fits people who find keyboard launchers powerful in theory but never built the shortcut muscle memory — and privacy-conscious users who want a native tool with no account and no telemetry.

What's the story behind your product?

Orbital for macOS's answer

Orbital is built by a solo developer in Munich who noticed that every Mac launcher assumes your hands are on the keyboard — and his mostly weren't. A cursor commutes surprisingly far every day between the Dock, the menu bar, and windows, so he built the opposite of a command palette: a dial that comes to the cursor. It shipped in 2026 as a native Swift app, sold directly with a one-time license.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Orbital for macOS's answer

Native Swift throughout — AppKit and Core Animation for the dial overlay (p95 open latency around 3 ms), SwiftUI for settings and onboarding, macOS Accessibility APIs for window management, CryptoKit (AES-GCM) for on-device clipboard encryption, and Sparkle 2 for delta updates. Signed, notarized, universal binary for Apple silicon and Intel.

User comments

Share your experience with using Orbital for macOS and ShellNewHandler. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

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Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

Orbital for macOS 0 mentions
ShellNewHandler 2 mentions

Tracking Orbital for macOS since Jul 2026.

  • I recently got libreoffice, but now the new option in right click looks like a mess. Can someone help me get rid of them please?
    Use Shell New Handler. Run the portable app and simply untick the items you don't want to appear in your new context menu. Source: about 4 years ago
  • This menu should be easy to add/remove programs to... Who is really creating Access Databases from this menu often enough to keep it here? (Not me!) Is there an easy way to edit this?
    I've always used ShellNewHandler for this. It's a really simple portable utility that allows you to remove most of the items from that menu. Tested it out on Windows 11 and it's still compatible. Source: over 5 years ago

Alternatives to Orbital for macOS and ShellNewHandler

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