(In Quicksilver, you must type “=” as your first character to trigger the calculation.) In addition, all except Butler let you use Quick Look to preview a selected item without opening it. But the next time you type “m” (or, depending on the launcher, after a few tries), Messages comes up as the first choice.Īll the launchers except Butler can perform calculations right in the search field. For example, if you type “m” in an effort to find and open Messages, perhaps Mail comes up on the list sooner, so you arrow down to Messages instead. All except Butler also have mechanisms for adding plugins in order to extend searches to include items such as 1Password logins and Transmit favorites.Īll the launchers become smarter as you use them. For example, you can ask them to look at only specific files or folders, or perform specialized Web searches for, say, Twitter users or IMDB entries. (You can see the full list of search categories in System Preferences > Spotlight >, where you can also disable or reorder the categories as you see fit.)Īlfred, Butler, LaunchBar, and Quicksilver display and open most of the same data types as Spotlight, but offer much more configurability. In Yosemite, Spotlight displays most results (including Wikipedia pages, movie trailers, maps, and so on) right in its pop-up window. In addition, Spotlight can search the Web (via Bing), perform currency conversions, show Dictionary definitions, and more. But Spotlight can find and open nearly anything on your Mac, including documents, folders, System Preferences panes, Mail messages, iTunes tracks, and contacts. The word launcher implies that you’ll be opening apps, and all the launchers (including Spotlight) prioritize apps in their search results. (If you want to use more than one launcher at the same time, that’s fine too, as long as each has a different keyboard shortcut.) What you can find and open Similarly, each of the non-Apple launchers has a default keyboard shortcut involving the Spacebar (LaunchBar uses Command-Spacebar, the same as Spotlight for Alfred, it’s Option-Spacebar for Butler and Quicksilver, it’s Control-Spacebar), but you can change this to whatever you prefer-just make sure your chosen launcher doesn’t conflict with Spotlight. Spotlight uses the Command-Spacebar shortcut by default, but you can change it if you like by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Spotlight >, double-clicking the keyboard shortcut next to Show Spotlight Search, and pressing a new key combination. In 2014, LaunchBar 6 was released with a redesigned interface, additional indexing rules and built-in actions, live web searches and usage statistics.You can disable or rearrange categories for Spotlight searches in this preference pane. In response, LaunchBar was changed to display its window at the center of the screen, below the menu bar. In 2005, Apple introduced Spotlight, which took over LaunchBar's default position at the top-right corner of the screen. It was ported to Mac OS X in 2001 as LaunchBar 3. LaunchBar began as a series of shell scripts for the NeXTSTEP platform, then migrated to OPENSTEP where it was developed into a full-fledged application. LaunchBar is distributed as crippleware shareware - full usage of the application requires paying the registration fee, but up to 7 abbreviations may be used per session without paying anything.Īccording to user interface researcher Bruce Tognazzini, "LaunchBar should be able to outperform a visual interface for complex, repetitive switching sequences by an expert user". LaunchBar also provides capabilities beyond application launching, such as file management and piping the current selection to a command line utility, along with clipboard management and a built-in calculator. For example, after training, Adobe Photoshop may be launched by simply typing 'pho' and Time Machine can be opened by typing 'tm' even though that sequence of characters does not appear anywhere in the name of the application. It uses an adaptive algorithm that 'learns' a user's preferred abbreviations for a particular application. It provides access to user's applications and files, by entering short abbreviations of the searched item's name. LaunchBar is an application launcher for macOS. Third-party application launcher for macOS LaunchBar Developer(s)Ħ.15 (December 13, 2021 20 months ago ( ) )
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