I have used LaunchBar for Mac OS X since day one of Mac OS X. This little application will save you so much time, you’ll not know how you lived without it!
LaunchBar is a program that scans selected directories and indexs the files found. You can refine this search to just applications, or documents, or add other data types, such as your bookmarks or address book entries.
“So what?” you say? Now that LaunchBar has indexed things, you can activate it from within any application via a simple command-space. Now a menu slides down and you can type the name of the file/application/person you want and LaunchBar will find it for you. You can type “BB” for example and LB will show things starting with BB, or that have two “b”s starting separate words, etc. Scroll down to “BBEdit” and BBEdit will launch. Now do this again and LaunchBar has learned that when you type “BB” you mean BBEdit!
so “PSE” opens Photoshop Elements, “mr” opens a new email to my brother, “sp” opens system profiler, on and on and on!
“Again, Steve, so what?” Well, now you can only keep applications on your dock that are running, seeing as you can launch them from LaunchBar faster usually than clicking on the dock!
Or like me, you can add a new entry in LaunchBar to scan a folder named “Databases” for all documents. Now, “sn” opens an excel spreadsheet containing all of my serial numbers, “ab” opens the address book, “md” opens my movie database. You are starting to get the speed of this.
Even better, you can now store all applications you install in a folder named “My Applications” and simply tell LaunchBar to scan that folder for applications. Now you have separated your applications from Apple’s, making migrating to new disks or operating systems easier and you don’t really care where they are located because LaunchBar gives you one, simple, common user interface to all of these files.
LaunchBar comes with a 30 day demo – you owe yourself to try it out and if you hate it at first, give it a week. You might thank me later.