Each time you copy or cut text, that content is added to LaunchBar’s Clipboard History. A menu appears letting you move or copy the item to the new location, or to create an alias or link there.Ĭlipboard History An unexpected feature of LaunchBar is that it gives you multiple clipboards without having to use a dedicated clipboard utility. There are a few ways to do this, but if the item you want to move is already selected in the Finder, just navigate to the destination in LaunchBar and press Command-D (for Drop). Move items You can open items using LaunchBar, but you can also use LaunchBar to move files and folders. So if you’re working on a project, you can stick all of its files, or aliases to them, in a folder and then use LaunchBar to open them together. Open groups of files Here’s one many veteran LaunchBar users don’t know about: If you navigate to a folder, pressing Control-Return, instead of just Return, opens all the items inside that folder. In my example here, I’m opening a text file in BBEdit instead of TextEdit. You just type the application name and then press Return. But if you instead press Tab, LaunchBar lets you choose a different application to open the selected file. Open an item in a different app When you find a file in LaunchBar and press Return, the item opens in its default application. As usual, pressing Return opens the selected item.Ī bonus tip here is that if you hold down the Option key when you enter a folder in LaunchBar, you’ll also see files that are normally invisible. For example, if you activate LaunchBar and type ~, LaunchBar will display your Home folder press the right-arrow key to view the contents of that folder, the up- and down-arrow keys to browse items in that folder, and so on. You can manually assign an abbreviation to any item you can select in LaunchBar.īrowse folders In addition to finding and opening folders, you can use the arrow keys to navigate folders within LaunchBar to get to files. But instead of pressing Return to launch Excel, click the Excel icon and choose Assign Abbreviation. Just activate LaunchBar and type, for my example, excel, which should immediately display Microsoft Excel in LaunchBar. The quickest way is to assign an abbreviation manually. For example, Spotlight won’t let you use the abbreviation XL to find Microsoft Excel, but LaunchBar will. You can instead activate LaunchBar and then press Command-G (for Grab) or use a feature called Instant Send-for me, a quick double-press of the Control key.Ĭustom shortcuts Perhaps the simplest advantage of LaunchBar over Spotlight is that LaunchBar lets you create your own shortcuts. The easiest way is to select the content and then press and hold your activation shortcut-this activates LaunchBar and grabs the selected content. When an item is selected in LaunchBar, pressing Return opens it-or, in the case of an application, launches it or switches to it.Ī number of LaunchBar tasks involve grabbing selected content-for example, text on a webpage, or a file in the Finder. For me, this shortcut is Command-Spacebar, but it may be different for you. You activate LaunchBar-which means to bring it forward so it accepts input-using a keyboard shortcut. “Base” shortcuts A few shortcuts appear frequently enough in these tips that I’m going to point them out right at the start. I’m going to show you some of the basics in this video, and some more-advanced tasks in my next video. Launchers are great if you prefer using the keyboard to a mouse or trackpad.īut people ask us why they shouldn’t just use Spotlight? I’m going show you a bunch of useful things you can do in LaunchBar, my personal favorite, that you can’t do in Spotlight. These are similar to OS Ten’s Spotlight, in that you can press a keyboard shortcut, type a few letters of the name of an app or document to find it, and then press Return to open it. At Macworld, we’re huge fans of what we call launcher utilities, such as Alfred, Butler, LaunchBar, and Quicksilver.
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