What launcher do you use?

August 3, 2004 8:43 PM

What launcher do you use? Quicksilver for Mac OS X seems to cause some kind of conflict so I'm axing it.
posted by tetsuo to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

"Launcher" as in a handler for the Apple-Space keystroke? Like LaunchBar? In that case, LaunchBar. The current beta is really, really, really amazingly cool, and it does a hell of a lot more than opening applications. If you mean something else, well, I guess I'm confused.
posted by majick at 8:50 PM on August 3, 2004

What kind of conflicts are you having?
posted by thebigpoop at 9:06 PM on August 3, 2004

What's wrong with quicksilver? just curious as I'm using it.
posted by filmgeek at 9:08 PM on August 3, 2004

A second vote for the lovely LaunchBar.
posted by redfoxtail at 10:06 PM on August 3, 2004

Quicksilver, currently. I'm rooting for it to succeed, but every beta so far has come with a new set of problems for me. Previous versions frequently stopped responding and would need a kill. The latest version hasn't done that, but now it randomly decides whether to accept the keystrokes entered after a command-space. Sometimes they go to QS, sometimes to the background app. Messy. Also bits of the bezel's UI sometimes "stick" to the screen. But it's young, free, and developing rapidly, so I'm confident the kinks will be worked out.

LaunchBar is nice too. Its adaptive algorithm seemed a bit cleverer as figuring out what you want.

Butler is somewhere between the two on functionality, but the suspiciously high number of crashes I got while running it were a turnoff. I haven't tried it since QS was announced, so possibly there's a rock solid version now.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 11:14 PM on August 3, 2004

Response by poster: When I was using Quicksilver any application that accesses the web would freeze up. Through process of elimination I figured out it was Quicksilver. I really liked it, but it was getting to be a pain. I think it may conflict with Internet Cleanup, since it started when I installed Internet Cleanup (but the problem didn't go away when I uninstalled Internet Cleanup and left Quicksilver, so I don't think it's Internet Cleanup in itself).

I think I'm going to go with TigerLaunch actually, I don't mind using the mouse for a launcher.

Thanks for the responses.
posted by tetsuo at 12:04 AM on August 4, 2004

I'm with Launchbar. And it's been around since the days of NeXT, so it's got Tha Cred. Quicksilver's nothing more than a johnny-come-lately reinventing the wheel.
posted by bonaldi at 2:25 AM on August 4, 2004

DragThing, baby! Even celebrities recommend it, woo!
posted by wackybrit at 3:53 AM on August 4, 2004

Butler - it's incredibly flexible and customizable. I'm so used to it that I get frustrated when I'm on a Mac that doesn't have it installed.
posted by aladfar at 7:22 AM on August 4, 2004

what's a launcher and why do you need one?
posted by Mars Saxman at 7:56 AM on August 4, 2004

I use LaunchBar, FruitMenu, and DragThing for different things. DragThing is particularly handy for opening photos in Photoshop from Kodak EasyShare -- I created a one-button launch bar with Photoshop on it that appears only in EasyShare to which I can drag photos I want to edit. (EasyShare doesn't offer a command key or mouse shortcut for editing photos in anything but EasyShare, sadly.) FruitMenu I use primarily for opening system preferences, because dammit, control panels should be opened from a fly-out submenu under the Apple menu, as God intended.
posted by kindall at 8:47 AM on August 4, 2004

because dammit, control panels should be opened from a fly-out submenu under the Apple menu, as God intended.

:-)
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 10:17 AM on August 4, 2004

I'm a big fan of DragThing, been using it forever. It's great for people who like to organize sets of apps/docs/whatever. It's not great if you're looking for whiz-bang access to any file on your drive, like QS and LB do.

I keep checking out new versions of QB and LB, since people say they're the beez kneez, but I keep failing to find the appeal. Maybe it's time for another run around the track...

BTW, thanks for the app-specific DragThing idea, kindall!
posted by mkultra at 10:50 AM on August 4, 2004

Oh, yeah, app-specific DragThing palettes are great. Try one with some AppleScripts...
posted by kindall at 10:52 AM on August 4, 2004

Count me as one who loves QuickSilver and hasn't ever had one whit of a problem with it; that being said, I'm sure I just jinxed myself. :)
posted by delfuego at 5:30 PM on August 4, 2004

I've mentioned it here before, but Butler is the bee's knees. It does a lot and you can customize the menus however you want.

I've used it since it was called Another Launcher and have rarely had any crashes. The few times I did have problems (several versions ago) it locked up but no other apps on the system were effected.
posted by D.C. at 6:14 PM on August 4, 2004

Been said already, but LaunchBar ROCKS!
posted by rglasmann at 12:32 AM on August 5, 2004