Which app launcher to use?

christiankirky said:

There are a few and I will try a lot of them. I just need your opinion and why.

Alfred, Quicksilver, LaunchBar etc

Click to expand...

Spotlight. It comes with the OS and is Apple's blatant ripoff of Quicksilver. Yes QS does more. No you don't need more. I had QS back on Tiger. I haven't bothered with it since Snow Leopard. There's nothing wrong with it I suppose. I just haven't bothered with it. Sorry I can't say anything about Alfred or Launchbar.

I should mention that my favorite thing about Spotlight is I can click the magnifying glass and type 1 to 3 characters, confirm that Spotlight found what I wanted it to find and hit enter. Any app on my system is one click, and 1 to 3 keystrokes away. I know it can search email and documents but I ignore those for the most part.

I really don't like the launchpad. It's too much like the one thing I hate about iOS: many many many pages of icons that look too much alike and aren't in alphabetical order unless I spend a lot of time dragging them around. If launchpad had an alphabetize option or if it allowed me to manage apps by some means other than dragging them around one by one, I'd be more inclined to use it.

I took a look at Alfred and Launchbar on their sites. They both offer app launchers using the keyboard. Interesting that I find Spotlight to be so efficient. I find that even after an OS upgrade, when Spotlight says it's reindexing, it can still find apps with only one or two keystrokes. I don't think I'd want to spend $35 on Launchbar when Alfred and QS are free and Spotlight is built into the OS.

Hope this helps...