In this episode we cover popular application launcher, LaunchBar. This episode goes beyond the basics and includes are several power user tips. We recommend you listen to this one in front of a Mac equipped with LaunchBar. Enjoy.
Links of note
Other Launchers
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The show recent documents key combination did not work for me, instead the “Quick Look” appeared when I hit the space bar. I could not find anything in the preferences to change that. What I’m I doing wrong David.
Extremely useful podcast for Mac users, keep up the good work guys.
Jay
[...] released a new Mac Power Users Episode, all about Launchbar. There is a discount code through the end of August for 15% off, DT-37F9-D8EB. [...]
Wow! Thank you so much—-who knew. I’m a big keyboard person and was thrilled to hear about this program. (I’m also very new to the Mac) Even using a few features make this worth the money. I can’t thank you enough.
I absolutely love this podcast. I’m almost as addicted to it as I am my MBP. This episode solved one of the biggest irritants I have with Mac OS X, Spotlight. It’s not awful. It’s just appears to be incomplete. After listening to the podcast and trying some of the features, I can’t imagine not having this utility. It’s worth every penny.
I just went to ITunes and gave your podcast 5 stars.
Jay Friedman: I think you are suppose to use the right arrow key to view recently opened docments.
Thanks! I haven’t had too much time to read up on Launch Bar, but this episode helped realize the benefits of this app. I’ve reinstalled the trial today and I’m doing my best to give this a go. I’m really loving it so far. Just have to get myself in the habit of using it.
Thank you so much!
I was an avid Spotlight user before to open my apps. First, this was an issue for me: I had to disable the Spotlight shortcut in the System Preferences of OS X in order to get Launch Bar to work with cmd-Space.
But after that: I am in LaunchBar wonderland right now.
The ownly downer: When I will be back at work in a week from now using the PC, I will… oh boy… I am in a happy place right now. No PC…
I already have LaunchBar and love it. I’m going to listen to this podcast in a sec here…
Hey there,
I heard this episode and was hoping that my screencasts will be mentioned – somehow.
But they weren’t and I’m pretty sure it’s not because I’m one of those sauerkrauts and my accent is just terrible. More probably you just missed them.
http://www.macosxscreencasts.com/?s=launchbar
Zettt,
I wasn’t aware of your screencasts but they look very good.
Thanks, admin.
Glad you like them.
I used to be a huge quicksilver fan, however since SL its been really bad, buggy, plugins broken, crashing, so I knew it was time to go looking for another app of this kind. After finding and installing launchbar I was looking for launchbar tutorials which led me here. Great podcast learned alot. I’ve subscribed as well.
oh by the way zettt found your videos as well, awesome tutorials.
Thanks Scott. Warm words are always welcome.
This episode alone was the reason that paid for a copy of LaunchBar yesterday. Very useful info.
Thanks for the podcast. Very informative. Very good job! I’ve subscribed and will look forward to listening to the others. And thanks, Zett, for the screencast link. Looks good. Will definitely check it out.
Best,
malthe (Denmark)
Best podcast for mac. Love the way you interact and get along with each other.
Most shows with multiple hosts try to highlight their presence. You two are awesome.
Great podcast !
One problem: I also cannot get the “show recent docs” to work, either with the Space command ( shows file in Quick Look) or the R-arrow key ( per poster, above).
How do I ennable the Recent Docs feature ?
Best,
Max
[...] works, but I sure did miss quicksilver. Then I heard about LaunchBar on the Mac Power Users podcast and decided to give it a try. I ended up buying it a couple of days into the free trial. It [...]
Max, Vicki, Jay, and especially Katie (since you referred in the podcast to using the Recent Documents feature to access Word documents, which is clearly not possible, as you’ll know in a second): the right arrow or space bar to access Recent Documents works only with Cocoa applications. Word is not a Cocoa application.
The Timer script for Launchbar discussion moved to a different thread and someone pointed out the really nice script located discussed at,
http://justinblanton.com/2010/02/launchbar-timer
It’s simple to understand and quite useful.
I’m not really a fan of the add event features of Launchbar. I find the syntax difficult to remember so it becomes a bit fiddly. Instead, I use FlexCal (http://www.flexgames.com/flexcal/) which installs as a preference pane. Since I use Things for my tasks, I set FlexCal to create events by default and after a keystroke, it pops up a pane to set up the event.
Thanks guys…
I found you via the Merlin interview.. like hundreds of other no doubt.
I never really “got” the appeal of Quicksilver or Launchpad til i listed to this today..
Thanks
@T. J. Lahey
I find Quickcal even more useful due to its smart reminders.
BTW:
Zettts Screencasts are nice. But don’t forget Don. He has two great ones:
http://www.screencastsonline.com/index_files/SCO0223-launchbar5pt1.php
http://www.screencastsonline.com/index_files/SCO0225-launchbar5pt2.php
I also shared some Quicktipps regarding LaunchBar recently.
http://vimeo.com/channels/quicktipps
I just found your podcast via stalking Merlin Mann. The LaunchBar episode was very helpful to me, and I’m looking forward to perusing the remaining archives. Well done!
Hey! I’m loving the podcast. Starting from the beginning and rolling through them all. Tried Quicksilver but find that LaunchBar is has a much easier learning curve and I love it!
One question…
Is there a way to do a facebook search in a similar fashion to google search?
Add a search command like this: http://www.facebook.com/search.php?&q=*
Here is documentation on how to do that:
http://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/SearchTemplates.html
Hope this help!
[...] Mac Power User Podcast spotlight on LaunchBar: MPU007 [...]
I like LaunchBar, but Quicksilver still does what I need it to do. When Quicksilver gets pried away from my by instability or system brokenness, I know LB will be there. Until then, though, QS still does what I need it to do.
[...] three of these had quite extensive documentation, and I listened to a very informative podcast about [...]
Just catching up on some of your shows and was listening to this one. A couple of thoughts. I think that the current iteration of Quicksilver is very stable. I’ve had stability issues in the past, but since going open source it has improved vastly. Although I haven’t used LB much, I’m not really seeing anything there that isn’t in QS except perhaps Quick Look. However, LB does lack a lot of the functionality of QS, such as Delicious bookmarks, triggers, and most importantly 3rd party plugins, such as 1Password! Also, QS is FREE, or at least donationware. I’m having a hard time seeing why I should switch to LB under the circumstances. Sure it’s not under active development, but other than stability issues, which I think have been largely rectified, the program seems to be far superior to LB, and most of extensibility happens through 3rd party plugins not developer updates like LB. The other thing I find odd is needing to launch urls from a launcher. Learning a few browser key combos makes that inefficient IMO. Command L on a mac will get you into the url bar, with the previous address highlighted. Once you visit an address it will come up as soon as you begin typing it. Heck in Firefox you can set it up to search on your favourite search engine as well as match recently visited sites. I’d like to see you do that in LB. This isn’t an efficient use of a launcher in my view. Anyhow, check out the latest stable release of Quicksilver. I think it’s better than it ever was.
Hi,
One of the launchbar’s most useful features is the clipboard manager which keeps a specified number of clipboard contents for later use.
You can assign a shortcut for revoking it and then preview and select anyone of previous copied items.
I’ve found it very helpful specially during writing process.
About the Firewire speed compare to gigabit ethernet, I guess it’s because firewire is a full-duplex connection but gigabit ethernet between two Macs is half-duplex.
Again thanks for your great podcast.
As a result of your podcast I decided to try launchbar instead of quicksilver. Its early weeks but I would say for me in 90% of use cases its a better tool than QS and whilst I still miss a few QS features I won’t be going back.
I discovered one thing today though that I had to share for anyone who doesn’t know. I use delicious as my primary bookmark manager and I discovered LB will bring up your delicious tags. I wanted my isp’s home page url and discovered an option for “warwick’s isp tags in delicious” so up came the home page along with the key spots within their site that I had tagged. 2 clicks and i’m deep into their site. Very cool.
As the link to the Tea Timer Dashboard widget doesn’t work anymore, MacSparky has been so kind as to provide me with a new link which I’d like to share:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/food/teatimer.html
I have also found the developers blog in case Apple really shuts down its Download pages:
http://stefan.sofa-rockers.org/teatimer/
[...] LaunchBar allows you to launch an application, send flies by email, append text to notes, make calculations, all without touching your mouse or switching between applications. If a Mac does not have LaunchBar I don’t even know what to do with it. I’ve learned about LaunchBar BlackBelt from Episode 7 of MacPowerUsers. [...]