Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

LaunchBar VS DocFetcher

Compare LaunchBar VS DocFetcher and see what are their differences

LaunchBar logo LaunchBar

Start with a single keyboard shortcut to access and control every aspect of your digital life. Use LaunchBar and improve your workflow now.

DocFetcher logo DocFetcher

DocFetcher is a portable German/English open source desktop search application.
  • LaunchBar Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-03
  • DocFetcher Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-24

LaunchBar videos

Launchbar - My #1 Time Saver

More videos:

  • Review - Mac Productivity: Launchbar 6 vs. Alfred 2
  • Review - Be More Productive with LaunchBar, Part 1

DocFetcher videos

How to use a "FREE" utility called DocFetcher

More videos:

  • Review - Docfetcher File Management Desktop Search

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to LaunchBar and DocFetcher)
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
File Manager
0 0%
100% 100
App Launcher
100 100%
0% 0
Clipboard Manager
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using LaunchBar and DocFetcher. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare LaunchBar and DocFetcher

LaunchBar Reviews

4 Best Spotlight Alternatives to Increase Your Mac’s Functionality
LaunchBar lets you look up documents, apps, and bookmarks using short abbreviations, albeit it isn’t as fast at returning results as the other two app launchers. In addition, it has a powerful file manager, which lets you query file metadata and perform operations like copying, moving, and renaming files and folders easily.
Source: techpp.com

DocFetcher Reviews

  1. Pros, Cons

    I love DocFetcher! I discovered this gem of a program when Windows stopped supporting string searches in word processors other than Word.

    🏁 Competitors: the generic string search available in Windows, Agent Ransack, Locate32, Everything by Voidtools
    👍 Pros:    Beautiful intuitive interface. easy to use, once you set up the index.
    👎 Cons:    If you have a large collection of files to index, you will eventually be unable to search all your documents at the same time. you have to set up separate indexes and search each one separately. available in a variety of versions, up to 64 bit.|The help files are good. however, learning how to set up an index can be frustrating.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, DocFetcher should be more popular than LaunchBar. It has been mentiond 12 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

LaunchBar mentions (8)

  • You're using function keys wrong
    I've been doing this for >10 years with https://manytricks.com/butler/. Works great! You can also bind snippets of text, scripts, etc. I can't overstate how important it is to have a keyboard that groups function keys into "islands" of (generally) 4 so you can touch-type them. An ergonomics consultant once observed that the source of my neck pain was that I looked at the keyboard while typing. As a touch-typist, I... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Maccy is an open source lightweight and searchable clipboard manager for macOS
    LaunchBar[0], which predates Alfred but is similar in function, also has a fantastic searchable clipboard manager. LaunchBar's manager includes a feature that I've not been able to find in any other clipboard manager: a push/pop stack. With this feature you can, for example, copy a bunch of different items from a web page on to the stack, then paste them sequentially in a web form and pop them from the stack so... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • What apps do you install on your MacBook Pro to improve performance and usability?
    LaunchBar is something I personally find a more useful and better considered tool than Alfred, though they're aimed at doing the same thing. It also comes with a great clipboard persister and manager. Every time you start doing things in LaunchBar, you can type a couple of letters to filter the list of candidates down, which means juggling a 100 item clipboard history becomes very easy to manage. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Clipboard app for regularly used text
    I use the one integrated into Launchbar. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • What is the best clipboard archiving utility for macbook?
    Launchbar will persist up to 100 clipboard items, with full-text search and access. I use it constantly. The rest of Launchbar is horrendously useful - the best of the 'accessory' tools, IMO. Source: almost 3 years ago
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DocFetcher mentions (12)

  • Tool to parse, index, and search local documents? - Windows
    I use https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html to index and search large repos of docs. I use Papermerge for my digital file cabinet though. DocFetcher is good for searching an existing repository of files. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Docfetcher is a cross-platform free and open source desktop search application
    As they state, it is crap-free, free forever, cross-platform, portable, private (local only), and indexes only what you need. You can also set minimum and maximum file sizes to index. See https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Career Advice for a fresh graduate who wants to enter Structural Engineering field
    What I'd recommend is setting up a digital and/or physical technical library. Download any useful documents, books, standards etc. and store them in a clear, concise folder structure. Then create an index of the library with a tool like DocFetcher. (Think of it as Google for your technical library) This should make it fast and easy to find the relevant information when you need it. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Looking for software to search inside zip files
    DocFetcher? https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html. Source: over 1 year ago
  • How do you organize yourself?
    I use Outlook for e-mail and calendars. I use Evernote to store my notes. I also have a folder in Dropbox called "docs" where I store TXT (and others like DOCX and PDF etc) files for tasks/projects like the cisco firmware update example. I use DocFetcher (https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html) to perform search on the stored notes in TXT / DOCX / PDF / etc. Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing LaunchBar and DocFetcher, you can also consider the following products

Alfred - Alfred is an award-winning app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac.

Everything by Voidtools - Everything. Locate files and folders by name instantly. Everything. Small installation file. Clean and simple user interface.

Keypirinha - A lightning fast and flexible keystroke launcher for Windows. No installation required (portable).

Agent Ransack - Agent Ransack is a tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently.

Raycast - Fastest way to control Jira, GitHub and other web apps

Recoll - Recoll is a desktop full-text search tool. Recoll finds keywords inside documents as well as file names.