Whether you want to quickly check where a particular city is or grab an address to share with a friend, opening a full-blown maps app sometimes feels like overkill. Mappa Mini is a free Mac app by developer Lucas Raggers that lets you do a quick search without taking up all of your attention.
Just click the menu bar icon and search for any business or location. You’ll see right where it is in a small pop-up, without having to load any application or website. If there are multiple matches, you’ll see them all in a list—click any of them to see the location in context. This is perfect for when you quickly need to check where something is.
You can get more details by clicking the three dots to the right of the location. This allows you to add the location to your favorites, open the location or create a route to it, or copy the address.
Credit: Justin Pot
You can choose to copy the full address or just a part of it, such as the full address, postal code, city, or street. You can also copy the coordinates, or just copy a link or picture of the map. All of this is useful if you’re texting a friend about where to meet and want to provide some quick context.
By default, opening a location will launch Apple Maps. You can change this, if you like, so that locations open in your choice of Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Waze, or HERE WeGo. Note that the initial map will always be an Apple Map—the setting only changes what happens when you choose to open the location or get directions to it. There’s not much more in the way of settings—you can change the size of the pop-up window, the map radius, and whether the application launches in the menu bar when your Mac boots.
It’s not an application that’s going to replace your map app of choice, nor is it trying to be. It’s great at what it does, though, and that’s doing quick map searches before getting out of your way.
