Form Follows Fun

Insights into the design process of a standout pie menu for macOS, crafted to seamlessly switch, launch, and control apps in style.

Let your apps fly—in a pie

A certain emptiness sets in when you finally complete a large project you’ve been working on for a long time. I spent a large part of the past year developing PolyCapture. For its last major update in 2024 alone, I dedicated about three months to focused development. Afterward, I felt like a change of pace. I started looking for a side project that was less intellectually demanding and allowed me to focus on the pure joy of software development. The agenda: “Form follows fun”, instead of “Form follows function”.

Completing the Circle

While browsing through social media, I came across a post by Gavin Nelson, where he demonstrated a mockup of a radial context menu for macOS. This discovery took me back over 10 years: I remembered how my then-girlfriend gifted me a book on interface design, how I eagerly read it, and how it introduced me to the concept of circular menus for the first time. Shortly after, I applied this new knowledge in my application to the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, where I was later accepted. My first self-designed pie menu in 2013 — among other things — paved the way for my design studies.

Mathematics determines design, and vice versa—calculation is part of the creative process

Good is in the detalis

The first steps called for mathematical answers: How do I draw a donut? How do I calculate the shape of individual pie slices? How should icons behave in relation to mouse movement, distance and angle? I spent an extraordinary amount of time calculating smooth shapes and fluid animations. The rounded corners on the pie menu slices alone took me half a day — a small detail with a big visual impact. My goal was to establish a visual style that could have come straight from Apple’s design team.

To Float or Non-Floating, That’s the Question

From my experience with previous apps, I know that a preview in the settings significantly improves user satisfaction. While I usually placed the preview at the top of the window in my past apps, I chose a horizontal layout for Pieoneer: The preview on the left and all settings in a sidebar on the right. Scrolling within a sidebar is a familiar pattern for Mac users, and I needed the space to accommodate a certain number of features.

What I was less sure about at first was whether the sidebar should float freely or extend to the edges of the settings window. In the end, I decided against a floating variant—once again in favor of making better use of the available space.

Floating panel versus a sidebar

Feel It, Hear It, Spin It

App design is not just about what a user sees but also about what they hear and feel. Those using Pieoneer on a MacBook will physically feel the navigation through the menu thanks to the Haptic Engine. And thanks to Josh Mobley’s carefully composed sound effects, the app creates a genuine, and when preferred, very playful soundscape.

Take a listen to Pieoneer’s opt-in sound effects

If Looks Could Thrill

One thing users see first—but that I often design last: the app icon. I designed it in Spline, and it’s my first fully 3D-rendered app icon. Its aesthetics are defined by a consistent visual rhythm. Conceptually, the connection to the app lies in the fact that the individual shapes making up the icon each match the shape of a pie slice from the circular menu, and together, they form a “P” for Pieoneer.

  1. A 3D-rendering of Pieoneer’s app icon
  2. A 3D-rendering of Pieoneer’s app icon
  3. A 3D-rendering of Pieoneer’s app icon

Don’t Be Square

Two core features were initially on my to-do list. First, a switcher that allows switching between running apps. Over time, I expanded it with a filter list that lets users hide specific apps (such as the Finder, which is always running on macOS). The second feature was an app launcher. It quickly became clear that not only apps, but also files and folders, should be launchable this way. This led the app to naturally evolve into an alternative to the macOS Dock.

And then there’s the controller, which I hadn’t originally planned, and with which the currently active app can be controlled via its shortcuts. A feature that felt so powerful in practice that I wanted to have it ready on release day.

Control other apps using their keyboard shortcuts

Built in Public

In design school, it’s completely normal to discuss intermediate stages and show unfinished work. In social media, however, I had refrained from doing so in the past out of concern that I’d have to debate what’s already obvious to someone with design expertise. This time, I shared almost every step publicly. And I can only report good things! The feedback was passionate, and provided an excellent complement to my usual internal TestFlight groups.

Go Ahead, It’s Solid

Pieoneer is now available on the Mac App Store. What started as a small holiday project ended up taking about six weeks of intense work. It was fulfilling to break design conventions, to give my software a pronounced “human touch”, and to do it all in constant exchange with the community.