How to set up your first radial menu on Mac — the Accessibility permission guide

The first five minutes with a new launcher are the ones that decide whether you'll still be using it next week. This is a full walkthrough of setting up Swik from zero — download, permissions, trigger, first menu — plus the fixes for every "it's not working" we actually hear.

If you're already past install and you're here because the menu won't appear, skip to Troubleshooting.

Step 1: Download and install

Grab the app from swik.me. Open the disk image, then drag the Swik icon into your /Applications folder. Don't run it from the DMG — double-click apps on macOS prefer to live in Applications, and permissions you grant to a DMG-mounted copy disappear when the DMG ejects.

Open Swik for the first time from /Applications. macOS will show a Gatekeeper prompt confirming the app was downloaded from the internet. Click Open.

Step 2: Grant Accessibility permission

This is the step almost everyone trips on, so it's worth a paragraph of "why" before the "how."

On macOS, any app that wants to observe global input — a hotkey pressed while you're in another window, a mouse side button anywhere on screen — is treated as privacy-sensitive. Apple's name for the permission is Accessibility, which is confusing (it has nothing to do with VoiceOver or assistive tech in this context) but that's the category the system uses. Without Accessibility, Swik can't see your trigger, and the menu never opens.

On first launch, Swik will prompt you. If you miss the prompt or it was dismissed:

1. Open System Settings (the app, not the old System Preferences).
2. Go to Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
3. Find Swik in the list and toggle it on. If Swik isn't in the list yet, click the + button and add it from /Applications.
4. macOS will ask you to quit and relaunch Swik. Do that.

This is the same permission Raycast, BetterTouchTool, Keyboard Maestro, and Hammerspoon all require. It's not unique to Swik — it's the cost of entry for any app that reads global input on macOS.

Step 3: Approve Apple Events (for clipboard and emoji wedges)

If you plan to use the clipboard history or emoji picker wedges, Swik needs a second permission: Apple Events. This lets it perform a paste into whatever app you're in (technically, it sends a Command+V via AppleScript).

macOS prompts for this the first time a clipboard or emoji wedge fires. Click OK on the prompt. If you accidentally denied it, you can re-enable it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation — find Swik in the list and toggle the apps it can control back on.

If you're not using clipboard or emoji wedges, you can skip this step entirely. Nothing else in Swik needs Apple Events.

Step 4: Pick a trigger

The trigger is the thing that opens the menu. A good trigger is the single biggest factor in whether you'll keep using a radial menu — it has to fire in under a second, from a position your hand already occupies, without conflicting with anything else on your Mac.

Three good choices, in the order I'd recommend them:

• A mouse side button. If your mouse has one of those two thumb buttons, this is the best trigger in the world. Your hand is already on the mouse when you want to launch Figma. Full walkthrough here.
• F19. Every full-size Apple keyboard has F13–F19 in the top row and almost nothing uses them. F19 is my favorite — clean, unambiguous, nothing fights for it. On a laptop keyboard without F-keys that far out, remap Caps Lock to F19 using macOS's Modifier Keys… button in System Settings → Keyboard, or Karabiner-Elements if you want per-app behavior.
• Right Option. Held-as-modifier triggers feel weird at first and natural after a day. If you don't use Right Option for typing accents, claim it.

Bad trigger choices: any shortcut that collides with a real app. Option+Space is Raycast. Command+Space is Spotlight. Shift+Command+anything is usually someone else's. Pick something lonely.

Step 5: Build your first menu

The single biggest mistake first-time users make is to pack fifteen wedges into the first ring because "I use all of these." Don't. Spatial memory — the whole reason radial menus are fast — breaks at around eight positions per ring. If you need more than that, you want sub-menus, not more slices.

Here's the setup I'd actually do on day one:

1. Add your five most-opened apps as top-ring wedges. For most people that's a browser, a messaging app, a notes app, a code editor or design tool, and a terminal.
2. Close the editor and use Swik like that for two days. You want your hand to learn which direction each app lives in before you add more choices.
3. On day three, add a sub-menu for secondary apps and one or two Apple Shortcuts you use often (toggle Do Not Disturb, start a focus timer).
4. Once sub-menus feel comfortable, add a context-aware profile that swaps the whole menu when you're on office Wi-Fi or an external display.

This order matters. Fast users of radial menus are fast because they built up one layer at a time. If you start from a twenty-wedge dashboard, your brain never gets to the reflex stage.

Troubleshooting: "My radial menu won't appear"

In order of frequency, the actual causes we see:

One more thing: keep the menu small on purpose

If you remember one thing from this post: radial menus get faster the less you put in them. A tight five-wedge menu you've used for a month will beat a twenty-wedge dashboard every single time, because your hand goes straight to the direction without a visual scan. Resist the urge to "add everything." The whole category exists to reduce the size of the thing you're looking for, not grow it.

You are set up. Press the trigger, flick toward the app you want, release. The next thing to read is probably how to wire Apple Shortcuts to wedges, which is where a radial menu stops being "a faster Dock" and starts being a control surface.