Alfred (free with optional £15 PowerPack).Even back when I first heard about DragThing, there were several full-featured alternatives. I don't know why this is such a popular category for Mac apps, but it is and has been for decades. There is no shortage of third-party application launchers for the Mac. As in Spotlight, selecting the non-top hit requires use of the cursor keys. Has a search feature that will narrow down the list of apps as you type, so it's decent for keyboard control, but really no better than Spotlight, which is easier (for me) to access from the keyboard and makes the top hit just as keyboard-accessible. What's more, even though they're smaller, icons in the Dock are easier targets thanks to Fitts's Law. Pretty, but it doesn't hold any more icons on a single screen than theĭock, so it doesn't really make more apps accessible graphically. But Spotlight works okay if the desired application is the top hit: Command+Space to pop up the search box, type the first few characters in the app's name, and hit Return (no cursor keys) to launch the top hit. And I dislike using the cursor keys because I can't use them reliably without leaving home row. I really want a solution that's either all mouse or all keyboard, so clicking a menu option that appears after typing isn't great. If an application appears as a hit in a Spotlight search, you can launch it by clicking the appropriate menu item or selecting it with cursor keys and hitting Return. But mousing to a Finder window means first getting (usually) several layers of application windows out of the way (I suppose I could use Exposé) to get to an open Finder window or the desktop, then double-clicking my way to the correct folder. This is silly I might as well use the mouse. With luck, I get the correct icon selected and can type Command+O to open it. With the keyboard, I can Command+Tab to the Finder (minimum two keystrokes), type Command+Shift+A (a very awkward key chord that forces me to leave home row) to open the Applications folder, and then start typing the application name (hoping I don't make any typos). The Finder is my last-resort app launcher because it just takes too many clicks or awkward keystrokes to get from working in an application to selecting an app icon. But Apple still clearly considers the Finder acceptable interface for launching applications and provides a prominent link to the Applications folder in the Finder's sidebar. Things got a bit scarier with the UNIXification of Mac OS, and after some bad app upgrade experiences in the early days of OS X I'm very leery of reorganizing my Applications directory (which is a shame). The application icon was both the representation of the executable file in the filesystem and the default interface for launching the executable. There was no off-limits Program Files directory that only installers were allowed to touch. In Classic Mac OS, your hard drive was your own and you were free to put your apps (which were, in general, entirely self-contained) anywhere you saw fit. The idea of navigating to the app's icon in the Finder isn't as foreign to longtime Mac users as it is to Windows users. The Applications Folder is for You (Kind of)! The classic way to launch a Mac application is simply to double-click the app's icon in the Finder: There are plenty of ways to launch apps in OS X without the Dock. For apps that didn't make the cut for the Dock, I'm experimenting with various launchers but will probably stick with QuickSilver because I need it for hot keys and its "power user" features give me feelings of superiority. ![]() What I find is that I use the Dock for "in-between" apps-ones I launch semi-frequently that I don't feel warrant their own key chords (more on this next). I've got all the essentials, plus a few non-essentials I'm vaguely afraid to remove or I keep there for completeness or aesthetic reasons. So anyway, here is my RMBP Dock, about one month in: It's nice at least that my Downloads folder is more readily accessible (now that downloading to one's desktop is out of fashion), and now when Dock icons bounce it seems like part of my standard UI rather than a weird annoyance from out of nowhere. I can't define tabbed layers with app categories that automatically open when a file is dragged onto them, but maybe there are other ways to skin that cat. I can't put anywhere near all my apps in it, but I can add some favorites. ![]() I find it awkward and obtrusive sitting there at the bottom of my screen with its poorly-defined boundaries, but maybe I'll get used to it. Rather than pinning the Dock to the right side of my screen, removing almost all the icons, and and setting it to auto-hide, I'm going to try using it. After all, I use it primarily as an app launcher, and there are other ways to launch apps on OS X. But it does cost money, and for my new work PC I didn't want to rack up requests for nonessential utilities.
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