

(In Quicksilver, you must type “=” as your first character to trigger the calculation.) In addition, all except Butler let you use Quick Look to preview a selected item without opening it. But the next time you type “m” (or, depending on the launcher, after a few tries), Messages comes up as the first choice.Īll the launchers except Butler can perform calculations right in the search field. For example, if you type “m” in an effort to find and open Messages, perhaps Mail comes up on the list sooner, so you arrow down to Messages instead. All except Butler also have mechanisms for adding plugins in order to extend searches to include items such as 1Password logins and Transmit favorites.Īll the launchers become smarter as you use them. For example, you can ask them to look at only specific files or folders, or perform specialized Web searches for, say, Twitter users or IMDB entries.
LAUNCHBAR 1PASSWORD FULL
(You can see the full list of search categories in System Preferences > Spotlight >, where you can also disable or reorder the categories as you see fit.)Īlfred, Butler, LaunchBar, and Quicksilver display and open most of the same data types as Spotlight, but offer much more configurability.
LAUNCHBAR 1PASSWORD MOVIE
In Yosemite, Spotlight displays most results (including Wikipedia pages, movie trailers, maps, and so on) right in its pop-up window. In addition, Spotlight can search the Web (via Bing), perform currency conversions, show Dictionary definitions, and more. But Spotlight can find and open nearly anything on your Mac, including documents, folders, System Preferences panes, Mail messages, iTunes tracks, and contacts. The word launcher implies that you’ll be opening apps, and all the launchers (including Spotlight) prioritize apps in their search results. (If you want to use more than one launcher at the same time, that’s fine too, as long as each has a different keyboard shortcut.) What you can find and open Similarly, each of the non-Apple launchers has a default keyboard shortcut involving the Spacebar (LaunchBar uses Command-Spacebar, the same as Spotlight for Alfred, it’s Option-Spacebar for Butler and Quicksilver, it’s Control-Spacebar), but you can change this to whatever you prefer-just make sure your chosen launcher doesn’t conflict with Spotlight. Spotlight uses the Command-Spacebar shortcut by default, but you can change it if you like by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Spotlight >, double-clicking the keyboard shortcut next to Show Spotlight Search, and pressing a new key combination.

You can disable or rearrange categories for Spotlight searches in this preference pane.
