Spotlight vs. Launchbar in OS X 10.4.2?

September 28, 2005 5:58 PM

Spotlight vs. Launchbar in OS X 10.4.2?

I'm currently using Spotlight in OS X. It finds files relatively well. Do you feel there is there an advantage to switching to Launchbar, and if so, why do you like it better?

posted by cahlers to computers & internet (13 comments total)

While this doesn't answer anything, I'd be interested in the differences between quicksilver and launchbar.
posted by atom128 at 6:27 PM on September 28, 2005

I feel like I should apologize for the derail, but spotlights (afaik) always there and impossible to get rid of, and it does what it does well. However, I really never thought it to be that big of a deal. I'm already a relatively organized person and dont have problems loosing files much. However, I have a hard time using a mac without quicksilver after a year of using it, and the way it allows me to work with my computer in a faster and more intuitive fashion (from as little as an app launcher to doing my web searches or to working with itunes). From what I know both quicksilver and launchbar are closer to eachother than either are to spotlight.
posted by atom128 at 6:32 PM on September 28, 2005

I actually prefer Quicksilver, but that's very similar to Launchbar. My personal points of preference:

• Speed. Spotlight is pretty fast considering what it has to do, but Quicksilver/Launchbar are instantaneous.
• Non-contiguous search term entry. I can use 'nnw' for NetNewsWire instead of 'netnew' in Spotlight
• Focus on apps and simple tasks. Sure, I've got to search from time to time, but 99% of my Q/L use is launching apps and simple tasks like playing music.

With all that said, I really think Q/L and Spotlight are complementary. Q/L feel more like successors to the Macro and Hotkey programs of old like QuickKeys, with the laborious setup phase cleverly sidestepped, while Spotlight seems more like a desktop version of Google that's easily accessible.
posted by boaz at 6:37 PM on September 28, 2005

LaunchBar wins hands-down. I'm tempted to disable Spotlight completely in /etc/hostconfig because it's so inferior.

• The Spotlight UI is annoying (and ridiculously slow!) and lacks almost all of LaunchBar's features.
• Spotlight doesn't index browser histories, bookmark lists, the iTunes database, or the iPhoto database.
• Spotlight finds all kinds of random and usually useless files (unless strictly configured)
• Spotlight isn't very configurable
• Spotlight doesn't have a web search interface.
• Spotlight doesn't allow file manipulation (although "Smart Folders" mitigates this somewhat
• Spotlight lacks the "Find items by kind" features of LaunchBar.
• Spotlight doesn't learn initialisms as search shortcuts.
• Spotlight is basically LaunchBar with all the usefulness drained out of it.

Quite a few of these features are missing from QuickSilver, most notably the adaptive shortcut feature. LaunchBar's ability to learn how you want to find your stuff is it's killer feature.

QuickSilver has a great price and nifty eye candy, and Spotlight is built right in, but you'll pry my LaunchBar from my cold, dead hands.
posted by majick at 6:55 PM on September 28, 2005

Launchbar is all about finding things. Quicksilver is all about finding things and performing actions with them.

For example:

LB: Browse through your iTunes library to play a song
QS: Browse through your iTunes library and upload a song using transmit to your web site (my favorite workflow)

LB: Find a text file and open it to edit it
QS: Find a text file and append a line you inserted into QS to it.

LB: Find an app on a disk image.
QS: Find an app on a disk image and copy it to somewhere else. Eject that disk image.

Launchbar has actions, but only 3 per item (or at least that's what it looks like - I don't use, I just got it quick). Both can do the workflow "Find AVI -> Open With... -> VLC" for example, but Quicksilver is still going to be more extensible and easier to use various actions. Launchbar binds every item's three actions to the same three keys, but the actions vary per item. Quicksilver you just type the action abbreviation.

Everything you can do with Quicksilver you can do with Launchbar, but that's just like saying everything you can do with Launchbar you can do with iTunes/Finder/Safari/etc to a lesser degree. Most of the workflows given above you can do with Launchbar, it's just a bit more complicated.

Anyways: QS - More extensible, actually has a developer community, and is free. LB - not so much. And if you really need spotlight, you can call it from within QS. I don't think you can do that with LB, but I haven't used LB that much, as I've said. Spotlight is all about finding crap that could be anywhere slooowly.
posted by easyasy3k at 9:13 PM on September 28, 2005

Also, for LB or QS versus Spotlight, you might want to check out this thread on the Quicksilver forums.
posted by easyasy3k at 9:18 PM on September 28, 2005

I find them all pretty useless.
posted by angry modem at 10:22 PM on September 28, 2005

Spotlight--in almost all regards--is highly inferior to either Launchbar or Quicksilver. I think its completely useless, in fact.

At first, I (like angrymodem) thought these "launcher" apps seemed "pretty useless." But then I actually sat down and actually used them for awhile. Now, I simply can't use a Mac that doesn't have either LaunchBar or Quicksilver installed on it. It's that significant a paradigm shift in the way you interact with your OS.

The LB vs. QS question is a total religious war on par with Emacs vs. vi, MySQL vs. Postgres, etc etc. I tried QS for several months, after seeing it mentioned on dozens of Mac geek blogs as if it was created by God or something. QS is indeed extremely powerful, but even after several months, I still couldn't completely grok it to the point where I felt that its productivity gains were worth the time it takes to completely harness all its features.

So out of curiosity, i tried LaunchBar. And I'm here to say that it has completely changed the way I use my Mac. easyasy3k hit the nail right on the head, if you're only really interested in finding things, then you'll find LaunchBar to be vastly superior to Quicksilver, and makes Spotlight seem like a total and utter joke.

Yes, you can find things with QS and Spotlight just like in LB. But LB is heads and tails faster than QS and Spotlight in doing so. LB is faster than QS, in that you can find things on the entire filesystem in realtime, whereas in QS, you can't find things until the QS index refreshes itself in it's next scheduled update. This alone made the switch to LB a no-brainer for me. Not to mention the fact that LB's adaptive searching is noticeably faster than QS (at least on my G4 Powerbook).

LB's ability to "learn" the shortcuts you use to find things can be downright eerie at times. Let's say I want to send an email to (or get the phone number of) of my friend named "Toshiro Mifune." I just invoke LB with Command-Space, then type "tmfn", and his name pops up in the LB instantly (assuming his name is in my Address Book, of course). I can then hit the Enter key, and Mail pops up, with Toshiro's email address automatically placed in the From: field.

Another thing I use LB dozens of times an hour for is navigating folders in any OS X file dialog-box. Now I don't even care what an application thinks should be the default folder to present to me in an Open/Save file dialog. If I know the folder I want to save it in, I just start typing any sequence of letters in the foldername, and when LB finds it, I just drag the LB search result into the file dialog box, and the folder changes accordingly.

And to correct easyasy3k a bit, LB does allow you to copy/move files to another location. Pressing Command-G loads any finder selection into LB, whereupon you can move/copy anwhere you want it.

LB's biggest weakness is its inability to search within your Apple Mail messages and mailboxes. For that, Spotlight still rules the roost. I also wish LB could search ID3 comment tags in MP3 files, too.

But as much as I wanted to love QS, and become yet another elite QS cultist, I have found LB to be a better product for 90% of the daily tasks that I would need one of these launcher apps for.
posted by melorama at 3:59 AM on September 29, 2005

I should add, if you HATE the Finder and Dock, LB is a godsend. Although you can't completely escape the Finder, for me, LB has totally eliminated the need for the Dock, as well as--for the most part--Path Finder.

Oh yeah, and its done wonders for my RSI as well.

LB is about the closest I've ever become to being a software fanboy. Now I know how all those Linux and Opera dorks feel :P
posted by melorama at 4:23 AM on September 29, 2005

A correction on majick's post: Quicksilver does have adaptive shortcuts.
posted by Acetylene at 6:32 AM on September 29, 2005

As others have mentioned, Spotlight and Launchbar (or QS, which I use) really accomplish different goals.

I use Spotlight when I want to find a file based on its contents. It works well for that, and for some other handy tricks. But when I want to find a file based on its name, I use QS. I launch my most-used apps and files through QS. It's faster.

Another name-finding trick that you can use with QS (and perhaps Launchbar) but not Spotlight is this: Suppose you want to launch the app Graphic Converter. "Graphic" is a very common word, and so is "converter"--you may well have several files that have one or the other word in the title. You don't want to type your whole way through "graphic" just to start narrowing things down, so you invoke QS and type "gracon." Bang, you're done. This doesn't work in Spotlight.

Spotlight (and Dashboard, for that matter) can be disabled using third-party software. I've killed dashboard on my Mac.
posted by adamrice at 6:59 AM on September 29, 2005

"A correction on majick's post: Quicksilver does have adaptive shortcuts."

I stand corrected. It did not at the time I evaluated it (or if it did, it was working so poorly as to be indistinguishable from missing) and I apologize for providing outdated information. The lack of this feature was 90% of the reason I purchased LaunchBar, and I'm glad to hear the feature has finally been implemented.

That along with the price should make it far more attractive than it was to me a year-and-change ago.
posted by majick at 7:12 AM on September 29, 2005

I used Launchbar with Panther, but haven't installed it in Tiger. Launchbar's adaptive shortcuts were really quick for things like "xl" (to launch MS excel). I just haven't yet felt the need to save a few keystrokes on an already fast service.

Re Quicksilver vs. Launchbar. QS is free, but had one fatal flaw that stopped me from using it. It took so long to come to focus that I always lost keystrokes. That is, with Launchbar, I'm used to typing: command-space, saf, and enter without looking, and expected safari to promptly appear. With Quicksilver, it tended to launch things that start with "af".
posted by Popular Ethics at 11:42 AM on September 29, 2005