RTFM LaunchBar

Every weekend I try to take 10-20 minutes to learn more about the tools I rely on. This weekend LaunchBar received an update so I figured now was the time to learn how to use it more efficiently.

Here are some gems from the LaunchBar manual.

• After triggering LaunchBar, hit command-G to make the finder selection active in LaunchBar. I previously used drag and drop to the Dock icon. Now I hide the Dock icon.
• When a finder selection is in LaunchBar hit tab to select another location. After selecting another location you get a menu to choose several functions to perform (Move, Copy, make alias, make hard link, make relative sym link, make absolute sym link)
• Autoactivation. Hit cmd-space-space to get a list of running applications. It’s basically the same as using the built in cmd-tab application switcher.
• When an application is selected hit cmd-Q to quite, cmd-H to hide or cmd-opt-F to force quite the currently selected application
• Run AppleScripts with parameters and passed files. This rises to a much higher level of cool if you’re an AppleScript hack like me. Nest the script in a “on handle_string(theString)” subroutine and LaunchBar can pass in parameters to the script.
• Open Terminal Here. After selecting a folder in LaunchBar, type CMD-shift-T to open a terminal window in that location
• Open LaunchBar from Terminal. While in the Terminal, execute ‘open -a LaunchBar .’ to set LaunchBar to the current Terminal location
• Type “sahi” to select the Safari history. Type space to begin searching the Safari history
• Type “man” and select the Manual Page search template. Hit space and type the command to lookup in the unix MAN pages.
• Create iCal events with natural language processing. Trigger LaunchBar and select the calendar or iCal by name and hit SPACE. Enter an event like “Dinner @ Joe’s Cafe @ Tue 7pm 2h”.