Launcher Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Quicksilver appears to be coming back from the dead

by Dana Franklin (Apr 18th, 2011)

Let's take a moment to appreciate the mouse, the marvel of engineering that made computing accessible to the general public. But, if you've ever watched an expert systems administrator rocket through tasks using nothing but the command line and a keyboard, you know the mouse isn't the world's most ...

LaunchBar 5 gives powerful launching options, on sale

by TJ Luoma (Feb 26th, 2011)

LaunchBar is a smart launcher, which learns from your habits and patterns to help you work more efficiently. Until midnight tomorrow (Sunday, eastern time) MacUpdate Promo has LaunchBar on sale for $17.50, which is 50% off the usual price. I love LaunchBar because it's smart. For example, I ...

Snood Redood coming to the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Aug 11th, 2009)

Fortunately, World of Warcraft didn't exist while I was in school, otherwise I might not have finished my venerable BS degree at the storied Ithaca College at all. But if there was one game that almost kept me from finishing all of those essays and homework... well, it was Civ. But if there were ...

AppMenuBoy: all your apps in your Dock

by Mat Lu (May 2nd, 2008)

Over on the Office Google Mac Blog they're calling attention to simple little application from Google Mac Team member David Phillip Oster called AppMenuBoy. Basically, it will allow you to get one click access to all your applications by clicking on its Dock icon. David designed it to function like ...

AppleScript: build a simple task launcher

by Cory Bohon (Feb 2nd, 2008)

If you're like me, when you sit down at your Mac, you end up opening a few specific apps depending on what kind of project you're working on. I am going to show you how you can group these applications into "task launchers" that will bring up a suite of programs with one click. For instance, I have ...

Quicksilver goes open source with Leopard release

by Mike Schramm (Aug 9th, 2007)

It seems like this news has been around for a while, but we'd never heard it, and it's definitely worth taking a look at. Alcor, developer of Quicksilver, the little launcher that does everything, quietly mentions on the Blacktree forums that Quicksilver will go open source and Leopard only with the ...

Trampoline: the quickest route to the tools you need

by David Chartier (Feb 26th, 2007)

Application launchers are diversifying in big ways, and it's great to see the market expanding. After discovering LaunchBar then switching to Quicksilver, it was obvious how useful these apps are and how important it is that there be a wide variety of them. A new launcher I just found, called ...

Valet - a flexible application launcher with Parallels integration

by David Chartier (Feb 2nd, 2007)

Valet is a new kind of application launcher that brings some interesting innovations to the table. First, upon activation it offers a heads-up display containing application icons, organized into categories of your choosing. This is a rich visual departure from competition like LaunchBar and ...

Lilt - wave your notebook like you just... want to turn up iTunes

by David Chartier (Nov 13th, 2006)

If you're finished with smacking your MacBook to make it do your bidding, maybe you can move on to tilting it and playing with the some mood lighting (in the Pro models) to really get things done? Lilt is a new app that harnesses the power of of Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor (found in PowerBooks, ...

Quicksilver developer update with new triggers, preference UI, more

by David Chartier (May 8th, 2006)

A pre-release, developer version of Quicksilver is available with a seriously revamped preference pane. Also included in this not-ready-for-prime-time release: a new Triggers system that allows for groups, a revamped plug-in pane with categories and "droplets," which you can read more on here. I'm ...

Extend your dock with Overflow

by Dave Caolo (Apr 12th, 2006)

While there are many full-featured launchers and dock alternatives available, Overflow by Stunt Software keeps it simple. The interface features several wells, into which you can drop an application, folder, volume and so on. Simply click the Overflow icon in the dock to activate it (or better yet, ...

Quicksilver pre-release version with mini-tutorial goodness

by David Chartier (Jan 6th, 2006)

This morning Quicksilver notified me that a new version was available. Since I love living on the bleeding edge of application launching and file manipulation, I went ahead and updated. While I can hold my own fairly well with Quicksilver's unbelievably powerful features, I was still delighted to ...