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Launchers and me

April 18, 2026 at 11:13 AM by Dr. Drang

I started using launchers shortly after returning to the Mac (from Linux) in 2005. The first one I used was the great Quicksilver. I’m sure I learned about it from Merlin Mann, who was Quicksilver’s biggest advocate, but I can’t point to which of his many posts on QS got me started.

When Nicholas Jitkoff (Alcor) stopped developing Quicksilver in 2007 or so, I switched to LaunchBar, and that’s been my main launcher ever since.1 I gave Alfred a workout for a few months—inspired, I think, by this episode of Mac Power Users—and I’ve tried Spotlight a few times, but I’ve always returned to LaunchBar.

My most recent trial of Spotlight began in late February and ended yesterday. I’d been hearing about the new and improved Spotlight since the introduction of macOS 26/Tahoe, and this episode of Upgrade inspired me to give it another shot. You may recall that as the episode in which Jason and Myke reviewed the results of Jason’s annual Apple Report Card, and they talked about Spotlight as being one of Tahoe’s significant improvements.

Aside
Another improvement they talked about was the new clipboard history. I haven’t turned Tahoe’s clipboard history on and probably won’t, as I use the one that comes with Keyboard Maestro. Yes, LaunchBar also has a clipboard history, but I use KM’s because it’s always active. Keyboard Maestro has many clipboard manipulation actions, and you can’t turn its history off. I figure one clipboard history is enough.

So I turned off LaunchBar and began using Spotlight exclusively. It sucked. I hung on that long only because I kept thinking, “Surely it’s going to improve as it learns my habits.” It didn’t. It was unbearably slow when I started using it, and it was still unbearably slow when I finally decided to pull the plug on it yesterday.

How slow? Finding files and folders—even files and folders that I had been searching for and opening for a few days—typically took several seconds (yes, s…e…v…e…r…a…l seconds). Finding and launching apps with Spotlight was much faster, but even that had a noticeable delay. You may remember that Quicksilver was so-named because it was quick—so are LaunchBar and Alfred. Spotlight, despite being a system feature, is not.

So I’m back to LaunchBar. A new release came out during my Spotlight experiment, which was heartening, as I’ve been worried about LaunchBar’s continued viability as a product. I upgraded and reindexed my system (which took only a few seconds), and it feels like I’m back at my Mac again.

One last thing: If you feel compelled to tell me the Good News about Raycast, please restrain yourself. I know about Raycast, and I know that it seems like just the thing for someone who does as much scripting and automation as I do. And maybe it is. But it seems like a project I don’t want to take on right now. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.

Update 18 Apr 2026 1:07 PM
It’s possible that Spotlight would work at a reasonable speed if I reindexed it. Myke Hurley has mentioned (not in the above-linked episode, but in others) that he’s needed to reindex Spotlight a couple of times. If that’s what I need to do to get it to work properly, count me out. Yes, I did reindex LaunchBar yesterday, but that was because it hadn’t run in seven weeks, and I wanted it up to date right away—I’ve never had to reindex it regularly.

  1. I’ve never tried the reconstituted Quicksilver. It may be fine, but I just don’t think it has enough momentum behind it. ↩

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