Take Control of LaunchBar

127 Pages·2013·4.107 MB·English

by  Kirk McElhearn

EBOOK EXTRAS: v1.0
Downloads, Updates, Feedback
TAKE CONTROL OF
L AUNCHBAR
by KIRK McELHEARN
$10
Table of Contents
Read Me First ...............................................................4

Updates & More ............................................................. 5

Basics ......................................................................... 5

Introduction .................................................................7

LaunchBar Quick Start .................................................9

Meet LaunchBar .........................................................11

Install LaunchBar ......................................................... 11

Launch LaunchBar ........................................................12

Invoke LaunchBar ........................................................ 13

Two Menus ................................................................. 16

Five Superpowers ......................................................... 18

1,000 Things to Do .......................................................21

Tweak the Interface ......................................................23

Launch at Login ........................................................... 25

Work with Applications ..............................................26

Abbreviation Search ..................................................... 26

Browsing .................................................................... 31

Sub-search ................................................................. 39

Send To ..................................................................... 41

Instant Send ............................................................... 42

Switching Applications ................................................... 44

Browse & Search the Web ..........................................46

Open Web Sites ........................................................... 46

Access Bookmarks & History ........................................... 48

Search the Internet ...................................................... 50

Save Time with Clipboard History ..............................57

Power Up Your Clipboard ................................................ 57

Access Clipboard History ................................................ 58

Append a Clipboard Item with ClipMerge ........................... 60

Type Less with Snippets .............................................62

Create Snippets ........................................................... 62

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Put Placeholders in Snippets ...........................................64

Edit & Delete Snippets ................................................... 65

Use Snippets ...............................................................65

Work with Contacts, Calendars & Reminders .............67

Work with Contacts ...................................................... 67

Create Calendar Events ................................................. 70

Make Reminders .......................................................... 72

Calculate Quickly ........................................................73

Invoke the Calculator ....................................................73

Perform Calculations ..................................................... 74

Control iTunes ............................................................77

Browse Your iTunes Library ............................................. 77

Control iTunes Playback .................................................80

Quickly Search the iTunes Store ...................................... 81

Do Amazing Things with Files & Folders ....................82

Select Files & Folders .................................................... 82

Manipulate Files & Folders ..............................................85

Use Terminal with LaunchBar ..........................................92

Master Actions, Services & Workflows .......................94

First, Some Terminology ................................................ 94

Use Actions .................................................................95

Use Services ............................................................... 97

Use LaunchBar-Automator Workflows ............................... 99

Customize LaunchBar ...............................................102

Set LaunchBar Preferences ........................................... 102

Control the Index ....................................................... 111

Copy LaunchBar Settings to Another Mac ......................... 121

Cheat Sheet ..............................................................122

About This Book ....................................................... 123

Ebook Extras ............................................................. 123

About the Author ........................................................124

About the Publisher ..................................................... 125

Copyright & Fine Print .............................................. 126

Featured Titles ......................................................... 127

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Read Me First
Welcome to Take Control of LaunchBar, version 1.0.1, published in
July 2013 by TidBITS Publishing Inc. This book was written by Kirk
McElhearn and edited by Tonya Engst.
LaunchBar 5 streamlines the way you access apps, open files, browse
your file system, use the Web, copy and paste, insert text, access data
from certain applications, run calculations, control iTunes, handle
file management, control your Mac, and more. This book explains
LaunchBar’s five superpowers and teaches you how to work faster and
more efficiently on your Mac.
If you want to share this ebook with a friend, we ask that you do so
as you would with a physical book: “lend” it for a quick look, but ask
your friend to buy a copy for careful reading or reference. Discounted
classroom and Mac user group copies are available.
Copyright © 2013, Eyes of the World Limited. All rights reserved.
Sponsored by Objective Development
This book was sponsored by Objective Development. Deep thanks
go to Norbert Heger, Johannes Tiefenbrunner, Manfred Linzner,
and Christian Ludl who took the time to explain more features in
LaunchBar than we’d previously imagined existed.
(Tip: All four names in the above
paragraph were pasted in with
amazing efficiency via LaunchBar’s
ClipMerge!)
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Updates & More

You can access extras related to this ebook on the Web (use the link
in Ebook Extras, near the end; it’s available only to purchasers). On
the ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can:
• Download any available new version of the ebook for free, or buy
any subsequent edition at a discount.
• Download various formats, including PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket.
(Learn about reading this ebook on mobile devices on our device
advice page.)
• Read postings to the ebook’s blog. These may include new tips or
information, as well as links to author interviews. At the top of the
blog, you can also see any update plans for the ebook.
If you bought this ebook from the Take Control Web site, it has been
added to your account, where you can download it in other formats
and access any future updates. However, if you bought this ebook
elsewhere, you can add it to your account manually; see Ebook Extras.
Basics

Here are a few rules of the road that will help you read this ebook:
• Links: All blue text in this ebook is hot, meaning you can click
(or tap) it, just like a link on the Web. If you click a link to switch
to a different part of the ebook, you can return quickly to where
you were if your ebook reader offers a “back” feature. For example,
if you use iBooks in iOS to read the EPUB of this ebook, you can
tap the “Back to” link at the lower left of the screen. Or, if you use
Preview on the Mac to read the PDF of this ebook, you can choose
Go > Back or press Command-[.
• Menus: Where I describe choosing a command from a menu, I use
an abbreviated description that puts the name of the menu ahead of
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the command. For example, at the end of the previous paragraph,
“Go > Back” means “choose the Back command from the Go menu.”
• Contextual menus: To describe opening a contextual menu, I
usually tell you to Control-click an item on the screen, such as a file
icon in the Finder. If your mouse offers a right-click option, or if you
use a trackpad or other means of opening a contextual menu, you
should feel free to use the method you prefer.
• Arrow: I use the word “arrow” as a verb often in this book. I use
it in place of saying “press the right-arrow key” or “press the down
arrow key,” saying instead, “arrow right,” or “arrow down.” The text
is more elegant this way, I think.
• Typing in LaunchBar: I give many examples of letters you
type in LaunchBar when searching. In order to show that they are
letters you type, I put them in capital letters, such as SAF to launch
Safari. You don’t need to type capitals, though; LaunchBar doesn’t
distinguish between upper- and lowercase. By the way, you don’t
have to use my suggestions for abbreviations. You could type SF,
SFR, or SFI for Safari, and LaunchBar will learn from that
abbreviation, and know that you mean Safari.
Here’s a taste of a few important LaunchBar terms:
• Invoke: Once LaunchBar is launched on your computer, in order
to display its bar—the small window that slides down from below
your menu bar—you invoke it with a keyboard shortcut. The bar
is where you work with LaunchBar. I explain this important aspect
of LaunchBar in Invoke LaunchBar.
• Index: LaunchBar knows a great deal about what’s stored on
your Mac because it creates its own index of these items. I touch
lightly on this concept in LaunchBar’s Secret Sauce:
The Adaptive Abbreviation Search Algorithm and look at it more
fully in Control the Index.
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Introduction
I’ve been using LaunchBar for nearly as long as it has been around
on the Mac. It’s the first utility that I install on every new Mac; with
LaunchBar installed, I can get on with everything else I need to do.
In my 2010 Macworld review, LaunchBar 5 became one of the few apps
to which I’ve given the highest rating (5 mice). Previous Macworld
reviewers (including this book’s technical editor in 2005) have also
given LaunchBar a 5-mouse rating. Macworld editor Jason Snell said,
in his 5-mouse review of LaunchBar 4 in 2007, “When I use a Mac
that doesn’t have LaunchBar running, I simply feel naked.” And Take
Control publisher Adam Engst has happily admitted to being “utterly
addicted” to LaunchBar since 2003, saying “LaunchBar has worked its
way into my neurons, and I’m all the more productive because of it.”
What’s the big deal? Why does this software elicit such fervent praise?
LaunchBar is all about saving time by keeping your hands on your
keyboard, as you can see in the following scenarios.
Launching an application:
• Without LaunchBar: You switch to the Finder, click Applications
in the Finder window sidebar, and scroll to find the app’s icon. You
then double-click that icon. You could, of course, have the icon in
the Dock and do this with a single click, but if it’s an app you use
infrequently, you might not want to clutter the Dock with it.
• With LaunchBar: You press Command-Space, type a few letters
from the app’s name, and press Return.
Opening a file that you’ve edited recently in Pages:
• Without LaunchBar: You click the Pages icon in the Dock,
and then navigate to the document from the Open dialog or choose
File > Open Recent and select a file. Or you browse in the Finder
for the document, potentially clicking through several folders before
you find the icon and double-click it.
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• With LaunchBar: You type PAG, and Pages appears in the
bar. You press the right-arrow key to see recently used documents,
arrow down to find the one you want, and then press Return to
open it.
In both cases, LaunchBar provides quick access to applications and
files. What’s more, LaunchBar learns from the abbreviations you type,
so rather than forcing you to use its conventions, it adopts yours. The
more you use LaunchBar, the better it understands what you want.
If this was all LaunchBar could do, it would be a useful, yet limited
application. The app’s name tells you that it can launch items, but
LaunchBar does much more, as its slogan suggests: “1000+ Features,
1 Interface.” With the help of LaunchBar’s slim bar, you can attach
files to new email messages, search your contacts, keep and access
a clipboard history, insert snippets of canned text, run Terminal
commands, and more—all from just the keyboard.
And LaunchBar has superpowers. It won’t give you the power to cloud
men’s minds or climb the sides of buildings, but it will turn you into a
Mac superhero. Anyone can master LaunchBar’s basic uses: launching
applications, opening files, searching the Web, and more. But this book
will teach you the five LaunchBar superpowers so you can work far
more efficiently on your Mac.
A Bit of History
LaunchBar was developed by Norbert Heger for NEXTSTEP back in
1995, as a series of scripts to open applications or documents. The
basic idea—typing an abbreviation to open an item, with LaunchBar
learning from the abbreviations typed—was the linchpin of LaunchBar
from the beginning. Objective Development released a public version
of the program in 1996, and ported it to Mac OS X in 2001.
For more about LaunchBar’s history and world view, read the 2003

interview with Norbert Heger, on the O’Reilly Web site.

Tip: Objective Development released LaunchBar 5.5 shortly before

this ebook was published, so if you’ve had LaunchBar installed for

a long time, make sure to update in order to access all the features

I describe.

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LaunchBar Quick Start
This book has a normal table of contents, so you can scan that to see
what topics are covered and jump to any topic from there. However,
you may find it helpful to approach the ebook not linearly, but based
on your situation. Here are some ideas for avenues of approach to
the content in this book.
You want a quick summary:
Download the cheat sheet. Put it on another device or in another
window while you read this book, or print it out. You can also find
the Cheat Sheet at the back of this book.
You’re new to LaunchBar—or want to review the basics:
• Start with Meet LaunchBar. This chapter introduces the LaunchBar
interface and the five superpowers, and walks you through a few
preferences that you should configure right away.
• Get initiated with superpower #1 in Abbreviation Search.
• Next, see common uses of LaunchBar as you learn the remaining
four superpowers: Browsing, Sub-search, Send To, and Instant
Send.
• Continue with the rest of the book, reading topics that interest
you. Once you’ve gained some experience, read the last chapter,
Customize LaunchBar, to fine-tune LaunchBar.
You’re somewhat experienced with LaunchBar:
• Read about superpowers #4 and #5 in Send To and Instant Send.
• Find out how to Use Actions to control your Mac, and how to Use
Services to access the features of one app from within a different
app.
• Learn how to copy and paste multiple items in Save Time with
Clipboard History.
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• Absolutely read Customize LaunchBar. Make sure the preferences
are right way for you, and then Control the Index to ensure that you
can find what you want in LaunchBar.
• Go further with Do Amazing Things with Files & Folders. Even
experienced LaunchBar users may not know all the ways they can
manipulate and act on items.
• Consider learning how to do these tasks from the bar: Search the
Internet, Control iTunes, Work with Contacts, Calendars &
Reminders and Calculate Quickly. Consult the table of contents or
the list at the end of 1,000 Things to Do for more that you can do.
You want to learn what’s new in LaunchBar 5.5:
• Type Less with Snippets covers the new text-insertion feature.
• LaunchBar has added a number of actions that work with Apple’s
Automator, which you can use to send the results of workflows to
LaunchBar. Use LaunchBar-Automator Workflows discusses this.
• LaunchBar 5.5 has many small enhancements that I don’t call out in
the text, but which make the program more powerful than ever. You
can review them in Objective Development’s Release Notes.
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