And the default entry doesn’t get in your way, because it disappears as soon as you start typing a new search term.Ī tweet from Tom Grimwood-Taylor alerted me to a way to get Alfred to (probably) activate with the last action ready to go. This turns out to be very useful, as you can repeat actions by simply activating LaunchBar and tapping Return. Whereas Alfred always starts you with a blank entry field, LaunchBar remembers the last thing you did with it and presents that to you when activated, LaunchBar’s display is consistent, and consistency is important when you’re trying to zip through information quickly.Īlso, LaunchBar will a show phone number in large type with a tap on the Return key, which is simpler than Alfred’s requirement to use ⌘L. Just seems cleaner to me than the way Alfred does it,Īlfred’s display looks prettier, but it’s not consistent with its usual list-based display of results. I use my launcher to search for contacts all the time, and the way LaunchBar displays the contact information, Given how often I run scripts, this was a big plus for LaunchBar.Ĭontact and phone number display. Maybe there was a setting in Alfred to change this that I never found, but LaunchBar, out of the box, just “knew” what I wanted to do and would run scripts without any need for navigation first. In Alfred, I was never able to run scripts by simply typing their names, I always had to first navigate to the folder they were in and then start typing the name of the script. This is a point in Alfred’s favor, but to me it’s overwhelmed by the convenience of hopping with the spacebar. The disadvantage of using the spacebar for folder hopping is that you can’t use it as part of the search term. Part of it is that the spacebar is always right there under my thumb, and part of it is that the inline arrow key layout on the Magic Keyboard (which I use on both computers) makes the right arrow less distinct than it would be if the arrows were in an inverted T. This may seem like a tiny difference, but I find using the spacebar-even after five months of training myself to use the right arrow-so much easier. When working your way down a directory hierarchy in LaunchBar, you switch to searching within a folder by tapping the spacebar in Alfred you switch by tapping the right arrow key. Given the overlap in features, my ultimate preference for LaunchBar over Alfred comes down to just a few differences:įolder navigation. Once you get acclimated to using one, you find working on a device that doesn’t have one like working with mittens on. Launchers, especially their ability to dig though a folder hierarchy in one step, are one of the main reasons I find certain types of work much easier on a Mac than on an iPad. Display information on someone in your Contacts.Present a clipboard history for you to select and paste from.Open a file in whatever app is associated with that file type.Launch an app (hence the generic term “launcher” for this type of app).Depending on what you type into that field, the launcher may Like Spotlight, they use a keyboard shortcut to bring up a floating text entry field. LaunchBar and Alfred are both launchers, apps that I always consider to be successors to the legendary Quicksilver 1 but which most people probably think of as similar to Spotlight. So I installed it and the Powerpack on both computers, training it in my habits and myself in its habits. It and LaunchBar do roughly the same thing and seem to be equally well thought of among Mac power users. Since I was considering wiping LaunchBar from the 2017 iMac and starting over from scratch, I thought it might be a good time to give Alfred a try. Some corruption in whatever internal database LaunchBar uses to make and update its predictions? I was pretty sure the indexing rules on the new iMac were the same as on the old one, so the difference in behavior didn’t make sense to me. I assumed this was because LaunchBar needed some time on the new computer to learn my habits, but even after the better part of a year, it still seemed to be making mistakes, especially when predicting which folder I wanted to open. The obvious question is why did I switch in the first place? After getting a new iMac in late 2017, I noticed that LaunchBar wasn’t as smart on that machine as it was on my 2012 iMac (which I had moved from my office to home and am still using). Five months is, I would say, a fair trial, and while there were a few things about Alfred I preferred, last week I returned to LaunchBar and am happy to be back. Next post Previous post Back to LaunchBarīack in October, after over ten years of using LaunchBar, I decided to give Alfred a try.
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