Sorry, I can’t comment on LaunchBar but I’ve been curious about it for years. The main reason I haven’t installed it though is that Alfred has turned out to be VERY customizable and easy to use together with other apps e.g. Keyboard Maestro.
With about 500 workflows (e.g. turning on/off lamps, automatic GTD routines, easy access to ‘hot apps’ and ‘hot paths’, scripted integration between Drafts and Notes, remapping of some keys for precise but easy actions, auto logins, references, various ‘tool kits’ for different applications, toggling WiFi, Bluetooth, connecting AirPods)—and a number of custom searches (spanning encyclopedias, services, a number of e-mail templates using the mailto: protocol), easy navigation of hard drive (including the part organized according to Dewey Decimal Classification), mathematical/statistical computations (using Python libraries), integration with devices s.a. Logitech’s Spotlight, and easy to create more actions on the fly (or in the deep) and more… I haven’t found many things I wasn’t able to create an easy solution for in Alfred.
The only time I resort to Keyboard Maestro is for workflows that depend heavily on keystrokes, waiting times, and detecting certain states of apps or environment.
I must admit though that another contributing factor for all this use of Alfred was that it appeared at the right time when I had been using QuickSilver and other tools for some time but was looking for upgrades. After some testing I judged Alfred’s potential so high that I payed a one-time fee for the Powerpack version. (Later I even made some more donation because it was so useful and essentially replaces a secretary about 20–40 percent of full time.)
Disclaimer: I am not connected to the company in any way.
A few recent comments here in the forum have prompted me to up my Alfred game a little bit. I did some searching and found a few useful workflows that I’ve installed. I’m also going to be setting up some custom web searches and exploring other opportunities to make it even better. It really is a great app. I also purchased the lifetime power pack (or whatever it’s called) a while back, and it’s some of the best money I’ve ever spent.
In case you haven’t come across this yet, a quick way to add a Custom Web Search is to invoke Alfred and type “?add”. This will take you right into the web search creation form.
You can also access other Alfred Preferences using the “?” prefix. For example, “?work” to jump into Workflows and “?def” to quickly access Default Results.
One of many nice touches I’m discovering as I dive more deeply into Alfred.
Yep, I think I installed three or four things from there today. I was intrigued by a Keyboard Maestro workflow, but it wasn’t working without a little more setup, so I gave up for now.
Eh? I use LaunchBar’s calculator several times per day, and it’s a super convenience I miss in Alfred: you just activate LB and press ‘=’.
I use a combination of Alfred and Launchbar simultaneously. I don’t have a problem, I guess, if LB just stays in maintenance mode with no new development. I just noticed, though, that the LB forum at Objective Development has been removed, so I panicked. I thought I should review Alfred again in detail to prepare for the worst, and I found this forum. For me, the only real problem I ever have with LB is that damn timeout: set it short, and it’s too short; set it long, and you have to wait an eternity for your typos to clear before re-typing. I’m an accurate touch-typist, but when my laptop is positioned badly in relation to the height of my chair, I make a lot more typos. If they just provided a graphic that counts down the remaining time, it would help a lot psychologically because you wouldn’t have to think about it, just continue operating your keyboard like a robot, which is what I do for the kind of dumb repetitive tasks that LB helps with. Another glitch is that it won’t index my Firefox bookmarks, only Safari, and I’ve communicated with the devs about it, but the reasonable workaround is to export/import the bookmarks into Safari periodically, so that’s hardly a dealbreaker either.
LaunchBar’s most obvious advantage is that Instant Send, but I guess I’m prepared to live without that if LB bites the dust. I use instant send often, but not constantly or massively, so navigating things manually wouldn’t be overly painful in my case. The bottom line with what makes LB better (except for the workflows) for me, though, is simply that it requires fewer total keystrokes than Alfred to get the same things done. For me, that’s it: bottom line, LB is faster than Alfred. You can blindly type memorized combinations into LB to work fast, but Alfred frequently requires you to think about the information it shows you before you can proceed, slowing you down further on dumb tasks that should have to be slow.
Alfred’s one undeniable advantage are those workflows, and I’m able to tweak existing workflows to get the full set that I want, which is 21 workflows. I guess there are Alfred lovers with lots more, but I would miss these workflows more than anything I’d miss in LB, so despite liking LB better for its speed, I’d be forced to take Alfred to the desert island. My only invocations of Alfred, though, are those workflows, so I’m refreshing myself how Alfred works to see if I can just ditch LB (I can’t). That’s because I don’t ever interact with Alfred directly, so I don’t gradually learn its interface because I’ve assigned all 21 of my workflows to 2-key chords that I invoke directly and instantly with Karabiner, which is by far my most needed speeder-upper. I’ve got over 100 2-key chords comfortably mapped to the keyboard that launch apps and files, browse to web sites, browse to file directories, and do app and window and tab switching. Karabiner blows both LB and Alfred out of the water for speed and efficiency when it comes to that kind of stuff. The funny things is that, despite using Alfred for years, I just don’t retain vividly in my mind its ins and outs, so if LB dies, I need to be more Alfred-ready. If I could just bite the bullet, simplify my life, and remove LB from my system, I would, but that speed advantage still cinches it for me.
What calculations are you missing in Alfred? It has the same feature. You can also do simpler calculations without typing = first; it just won’t interpret things like sin() that way.
Yes I use Alfred’s calculator many times a day. More complex math equations can be implemented in Alfred, using GCMathParser, by prefixing the ‘=’ sign if you first configure it in Features > Calculator preferences
Thanks, you just type and go–that’s one less keystroke than LaunchBar. And I just checked that box.
I’ve been working with Alfred the past 24 hours, and I must say it’s almost a wash–at least in terms of how I actually use them–so that I don’t have to panic if LaunchBar decays and dies.
Nice! I’m totally an RPN guy, but I have to sacrifice that for the convenience of built-in calculators on phones and computers. Your RPN calc can benefit from an update, though, which I posted about at the Alfred forum.
By the way, in calling it essentially a wash between Alfred and LB in my case, it’s still more keystrokes required for Alfred, and that’s the dealbreaker for me. Alfred does offer a better, slicker look, and smarter–very smart–results lists, but despite LB’s rough edges, the most useful stuff always does always end up closest. LB is still better for power users, I think, and one inevitably becomes a power user over one’s personal set of redundant tasks. It’s cost-free to leave Alfred installed for its workflows, which I actuate directly via key combos, never via the Alfred interface, but I do wish I could just go with one or the other.
EDIT: I should add one more thing: LB allows the creation of abbreviations on the fly, but Alfred only optimizes through training. That causes a big difference in the number of keystrokes required to do a dumb thing, from launching an app with a long name to opening a bookmark that has a long, descriptive title. After the training, Alfred eventually comes close, but then it can get trained away or an unexpected variation can arise if you have an unlucky collection of destinations. LB, on the other hand, lets you short-circuit immediately, with 100% consistency, and the abbreviation persists as long as you want. I can fly LB blind when I want to, but if you go robotic with Alfred, you launch the wrong thing annoyingly often.
As a small example, I have a bookmark, “Google News.” It’s never going to be the top hit because of Google search, which would be fine if it were always guaranteed to be the #2 hit. But even then, it’s a minimum of 4 keystrokes to launch, where LB is always 3 (25% less) with 100% accuracy.
Also: one thing Alfred has is the development community. It’s only because Objective Development killed the LB forum that I’m now trying to switch over.
EDIT: And oh yeah, another thing: Alfred gives very smart results, but there are only 10, with no option but to scroll, only ever showing 10. I have LB default to about 40 because it fits on my screen, and why not? It’s mostly a load of junk, with the real useful ones in the top 10 (like Alfred), but you don’t have to look at the ugly bottom 30, and they disappear as fast as the rest. In other words, it costs nothing, yet sometimes there’s something down in that crap to remind you of something totally obscure that might be useful someday or at least interesting.
Now that’s interesting. A quick test shows that might just have me covered, especially if I can create the custom file actions I need that aren’t in the default actions. I wonder what the more dedicated instant-senders think?
I’m only able to set up the option key as a double tap. cmd as well, but that would interfere with other stuff. I’d like to know, though, how to get ctrl to work because it simply doesn’t register for me. Double tap option-key is good enough I guess.
Instant Send lets you send files or text selections to LaunchBar and from there send them to apps, folders, email contacts, or send scripts to AppleScript. It’s very powerful but as with many more powerful LaunchBar tools it requires memorizing modifier keys to work in conjunction with the invocation command, and sometimes those modifier keys get reused in other functions, so it can sometimes be confusing. (Alternatively, you can drag files/text to the LaunchBar menubar icon, which is pretty easy!) So typically you select a file, invoke LaunchBar, hit a modifier key for Instant Send, then you type an abbreviation of the target of the SendTo operation. But again, there are many custom commands you might need to remember in the Send portion too, like Command-Return: Move to Folder, or Option-Return: Copy to Folder
After coming back from a one week vacation (or as David Sparks calls it, sabbatical) I forgot most of the intricate commands I’d memorized for LaunchBar and decided I wanted something more transparent and easy. Tried the free tier of Alfred and soon after paid for the PowerPak unlock so I could QuickLook files and 1Password and other things.
