There’s also an option to use it for free, with one caveat: as the LaunchBar website puts it, the free version of the software “occasionally invites you to take a short break, allowing you to breathe and relax.”Īlfred is simply free, at least the core software is. LaunchBar sells for $29 and comes with a month-long free trial. As similar as the two apps are, there are some key differences between LaunchBar and Alfred. One of the most popular alternatives is Alfred, which offers many of the same features. LaunchBar isn’t the only launcher of its type. Master it and you could save yourself minutes of time every day. Stairways Software.From quickly launching apps to searching files and managing your clipboard, LaunchBar lets you do a lot of things with just a few keypresses. Now think about all the time you could be saving and download the free trial versions of all three and start saving tons of time and keystrokes yourself. So there you have it… this trio of powerful yet inexpensive utilities has saved me literally hundreds of hours and millions of keystrokes over the years. These are just a few of the Keyboard Maestro macros I use to save time and keystrokes Since QuicKeys demise a few years back, Keyboard Maestro has been my go-to utility for launching apps from the keyboard, manipulating window sizes and positions, adding keyboard shortcuts where none exist, and clicking buttons without touching a mouse or trackpad. If that sounds like the late, lamented QuicKeys to some of you old-timers out there, you’re absolutely right. Last but not least, Keyboard Maestro lets me create “macros” that I can execute with a single keystroke or mouse click. So when I accidentally type, “taht” or “iPhnone” TextExpander types the proper words and does it so quickly that if you blink you’ll miss it. TextExpander can also replace thousands of common typos on the fly. When I type “preq,” TextExpander replaces it with this lengthy product request message (right) I have dozens of these and they add up to a lot of time saved every day. Or, if I type “blc,” TextExpander replaces it with my email address ( ), which saves me 15 keystrokes. TextExpander does just what its name implies – it inserts words, sentences, or paragraphs when you type the associated abbreviation.įor example, when I type, “bltv,” TextExpander replaces it with, “The BobLeVitus.TV Show,” saving me 16 keystrokes. LaunchBar provides fast, easy access to the last 100 items I’ve copied or cut. Better still, unlike the OS X clipboard, which is vaporized when you shut down, reboot, or experience a crash or kernel panic, LaunchBar’s Clipboard History survives across restarts and crashes, which is just freakin’ awesome. Perhaps my favorite feature is Clipboard History, which preserves up to 100 items I’ve cut or copied to OS X’s single-item clipboard. Next: My Favorite Feature - My Favorite Feature There is no occurrence of “AA” in the app’s name, but since I’ve used LaunchBar to open it several times in the past few weeks, it made an educated guess that Adobe Audition was what I was looking for. In the figure above, I typed “AA” and the first item in the list is Adobe Audition (highlighted). LaunchBar’s contextual menu (right) offers options for the selected item.Īnd LaunchBar learns what you search for most frequently and often predicts what you’re looking for before you’ve typed more than one or two characters. But only LaunchBar lets you do much more with items in that list, such as copying, moving, renaming, and compressing files or folders, controlling most of iTunes, and instant web searches, all without touching the mouse or trackpad. Like Spotlight, just type a few characters and a list of files appears almost instantly. LaunchBar seems similar to OS X Yosemite’s Spotlight at first glance, but it’s much more powerful and configurable. Since I feel more productive when my fingers are on the keyboard, all three utilities include lots of keyboard functionality you won’t find in OS X. So here are three utilities I use many times every day to save me time, keystrokes, or both. Clair Software adds features and shortcuts to Open and Save dialogs (to make opening and saving files faster and easier). For example, a word processor mimics a pen, typewriter, and/or paste-up board a spreadsheet mimics an accountant’s ledger pad and a calculator app mimics, well, a handheld calculator.Ī utility, on the other hand, does something exclusive to a computer with no real world counterpart. What’s the difference? In my mind, an application (aka “program” or “app”) mimics something from the real world. Someone recently asked me about my “must-have” applications for Mac OS X Yosemite and I realized most of them are utilities, not applications.
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