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Quicksilver vs Alfred vs Launchbar vs

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PoseidonMac

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 5, 2011
38
0
Which do you use, suggest, and why?

I use Quicksilver because that is what I have always used and know it well, however, there are now a few more options and I was wondering what you think.
 
I tried QS several times the past five, six years, and while I admire its features, it was just not for me.
I simply use Alfred, that is enough for my application start up needs, and it looks a bit nicer.
 
I tried Quicksilver a little and didn't care for it. I feel that's a personal taste issue, rather than any fault of QS itself, though.

I have Alfred (with powerpack), and love it. Spotlight is fine for freshly installed OSs that have little on it, but it doesn't learn. Alfred does.
And while I have dabbled with the powerpack, I paid for it mostly to support the dev. Even by itself, Alfred is an awesome help to me.

It even tracks it's own usage. :)

"Since Aug 14, 2011, Alfred has been used 2804 times. Average 13.9 times per day."

That gives it extra points in my book. :)
 
I gave up on Quicksilver after installing it years ago, looking on their website for how to use it and only finding stuff saying "Quicksilver is so powerful that no one even knows what its fully capable of!"

Worthless IMO and promptly uninstalled. (Information on how to use it would have been much better).

Now to get to my real point I've heard its been abandoned so you may want to check in to that if you are still using it.
 
I can't even express how amazingly dependent I've become on Alfred.
 
I use QS because it's free. Alfred is free but to come close to similar functionality you need to buy the powerpack. But for paid products, both Alfred and Launchbar are very very good.

Everyone should have one of the three installed on their machine.
 
I use Quicksilver because it can search applications' menu items (I know you can do this from the Help menu but in my view Quicksilver's way of doing it is much better).

I also love that Quicksilver with the help of a plugin can search your 1Password logins. That way I not only can search by typing but also assign keyboard shortcuts to a login. Like cmd alt G for Gmail or whatever. It is also possible to choose which browser to open the login in, and login to multiple sites at the same time.

Also, the Quicksilver default interface is kinda ugly. I recommend changing it to BezelHUD.
 
Can anyone please explain to me what Alfred does that Spotlight doesn't? Except for the design... I feel like you can do everything in spotlight, am i wrong?
 
Shredder- said:
Can anyone please explain to me what Alfred does that Spotlight doesn't? Except for the design... I feel like you can do everything in spotlight, am i wrong?
Click to expand...

It's faster, more accurate and it remembers your preferred choices. As an application launcher it is just more efficient than Spotlight.
You can try it and see for yourself.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
It's faster, more accurate and it remembers your preferred choices. As an application launcher it is just more efficient than Spotlight.
You can try it and see for yourself.
Click to expand...

It's also far easier to get to what you want. For instance to get to the prefpane for Displays, in spotlight I have to type out "displays" before it comes as the top hit. Alfred when fresh was "disp" and is now "di".

I also find that Alfred's built in Shutdown, Sleep & Restart commands are soooo useful! easier to type "sh" enter than point and click 3 times. This comes without the PowerPack
 
jamesr19 said:
I also find that Alfred's built in Shutdown, Sleep & Restart commands are soooo useful! easier to type "sh" enter than point and click 3 times. This comes without the PowerPack
Click to expand...
Or you can use ctrl + eject ;)
 
I've used all 3 of them separately at one point in time, but recently I've just started using Spotlight. I only use Spotlight for launching applications and I find it sufficient enough for my needs. If I were to fall back on one of them, I did like Alfred the best.
 
Wow thanks so much to everyone for their input. I am strongly considering going to Alfred, I love quicksilver and all but I would rather pay a little money and know that it will continue to be developed. I guess Apple will improve on Spotlight to make it better but for now I do not see Apple ingraining their OS with anything nearly as powerful as one of these application launchers. Should I get Alfred from the app store or buy it through their site? Pros / Cons?
 
Ok I made the switch to Alfred. Thanks jamesr19 for the heads up on the discount package. Also, fyi to anyone who wants to download it, right now it is best to get it from the developer website if you are interested in buying the powerpack. I downloaded it from the app store but had to re-download it to get the powerpack.

Loving the speed of it so far.

Next question. What extensions do people have for Alfred? Is there a good place to find some? Shell scripts, etc.
 
+1 for Alfred.
My bro told me about QS and Alfred, but said he preferred Alfred since its cleaner and faster.
From what I remember, QS has more features.

Since Nov 7, 2011, @alfredapp has been used 4,489 times. Average 37.7 times per day

Not sure if thats a lot or not, but I love Alfred, my favorite app! :)
 
PoseidonMac said:
Next question. What extensions do people have for Alfred? Is there a good place to find some? Shell scripts, etc.
Click to expand...

I use Alfred SO much at home and at work. I'm pretty certain that I couldn't do my job as efficiently without it.

The Alfred guys are really good about adding good extensions on their site here:

http://support.alfredapp.com/extensions

You'll find that I've written a few on there, mostly related to Dropbox. You can find the ones I've written posted here:

http://rjames86.wordpress.com
 
I've used QS for years, but I updated it recently and it just crashed continuously in Snow Leopard - even reverting back to an older version didn't solve it.

After about 3 days of troubleshooting, I gave up on it and I'm using Alfred now.

The only thing I miss is file system browsing - I know the powerpack for Alfred will give me this, but the only software I pay for is my OS's, and I don't pirate. :)
 
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