LaunchBar is often grouped with most file launchers, but it’s really a full productivity suite shrunken down into a single-line search bar interface. While it’s true that the most common system-level actions can be completed through LaunchBar, the utility shines when you bend it to your will, performing actions that you wouldn’t expect from an app launcher. As soon as you replace Spotlight with LaunchBar as the default for ⌘-Space, your clipboard history is at your fingertips, along with a URL launcher, calculator, URL converter, file metadata viewer, and so much more.
LaunchBar truly shines when you take it a step beyond its conceivable limit. One of OS X’s great draws has always been its intuitive drag-and-drop fluidity, but LaunchBar folds that complexity into itself, letting you do it all – copy/move files across your file structure, open specific files in particular apps – from a single place, one common launch point that can send you anywhere you’d like. Extensive contextual menus unfold and direct you along your way as you navigate the expansive feature set that LaunchBar offers, meaning you’re simultaneously guided along the path you expect, and tempted to take a detour when you realize it can do something completely unexpected and new. It’s an app that reveals itself in new ways over time, easing you into its simplest features and blowing your mind if you give it a chance. When you get used to LaunchBar, any other computer without it feels like its missing the glue that holds everything together.
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