LaunchBar is more than just a tool for locating and opening files or programs on your Mac. With its help, you can immediately find information online, make calculations, handle files on your computer, manage clipboard items, access contact details, and so much more.
A setup assistant will guide you every step of configuring some basic tool settings. The first thing you need to do is to define a global hotkey for immediately displaying LaunchBar's search screen on your desktop. Then, every time you will need to search certain info, file or utility, simply type the correspondent keywords in the program's search bar and hit the Enter key.
In the Index window of the utility, you will find a wide range of search templates and you can configure their correspondent settings according to your needs. In addition, the program provides you with a statistics report that's being based on the features you use most often.
The only thing missing from this utility is a built-in help manual which might prove to be of good use to beginners. The only guide you can get is on the homepage of the developer and it's created for a previous version (LaunchBar 5). According to the info from the developer's website "The Help for LaunchBar 6 is already in the works and will be available soon.". Still, after spending some time to test the program's capabilities, you will see that working with LaunchBar isn't that difficult.
In conclusion, you should give LaunchBar a try if you're looking for a way to boost up your productivity while working on your Mac. It's feature-rich, works flawlessly, and comes with a fair price.
v5.3 [Jun 18, 2012]
- Improved compatibility with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
- Optimized for MacBook Pro with Retina display (preliminary, a few missing high resolution images will be added shortly).
- Quick access to 1Password bookmarks, tags and folders - either directly (by entering an abbreviation) or via browsing. Note: You may have to add a new 1Password indexing rule in LaunchBar's index window.
- Quick access to Tower repositories. Switch to repositories in Tower or browse the contents of the corresponding working copy.
- Improved calendar support
- Distinction between reminders and calendars
- Growl notifications for new events and reminders
- Extended support for third party email clients
- Quickly send files or text to contacts from your address book.
- Built-in support for Apple Mail, Mailplane, Microsoft Outlook, Postbox, Sparrow.
- The email client used for sending emails is either chosen automatically, or it can be selected manually in LaunchBar Preferences > Actions > Options.
- Ability to set up a custom AppleScript instead (by implementing on sendFiles(_files, _emailAddresses) and on sendText(_text, _emailAddresses) handlers).
- Added "Copy Name" and "Copy and Paste Name" to built-in actions.
- Improved QuickCal support.
- Indication if an item in an application's recent documents list is located in iCloud.
- The "xcworkspace" file type has been added to the "Xcode Project Files" file type collection.
- Gatekeeper ready Bug Fixes
- Addresses an issue with contacts indexing on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
- Addresses an issue related to application indexing via Spotlight.
- Phone numbers labeled with "iPhone" are now displayed as mobile phone numbers.
- Fixes an issue with search templates containing #-characters.
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