Software Alternatives & Reviews

LaunchBar VS Quicksilver

Compare LaunchBar VS Quicksilver 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.

Quicksilver logo Quicksilver

Quicksilver is a fast and free Mac OS X productivity application that gives you the power to control your Mac quickly and elegantly. Quicksilver learns your habits, making your everyday chores simple and efficient.
  • LaunchBar Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-03
  • Quicksilver Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-13

LaunchBar

Categories
  • Productivity
  • Mac
  • App Launcher
  • Windows Tools
Website obdev.at
Details $-

Quicksilver

Categories
  • App Launcher
  • Windows Tools
  • Mac
  • Productivity
Website qsapp.com
Details $

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

Quicksilver videos

CAPITAL ONE QUICKSILVER REVIEW 2020

More videos:

  • Review - Capital One Quicksilver Card Review | Best Credit Card For Beginners?!
  • Review - 2019 Capital One Quicksilver Real Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to LaunchBar and Quicksilver)
Productivity
35 35%
65% 65
App Launcher
31 31%
69% 69
Mac
34 34%
66% 66
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using LaunchBar and Quicksilver. 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 Quicksilver

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

Quicksilver Reviews

7 Best Alfred Alternatives To Maximize Your Productivity
Quicksilver is a macOS productivity app that helps users perform everyday tasks much faster. It helps you keep track of your files and allows for the usage of various useful plugins.
Source: blaze.today
4 Best Spotlight Alternatives to Increase Your Mac’s Functionality
In terms of usability, searching for items in QuickSilver is a little different than most application launchers. Rather than entering your query in the search window, here, you need to first enter the query in the search tab and then enter an action you want to perform on it in the action tab. Then, based on the available options, choose an action and hit return to perform...
Source: techpp.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Quicksilver should be more popular than LaunchBar. It has been mentiond 13 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 / about 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: over 2 years ago
  • Clipboard app for regularly used text
    I use the one integrated into Launchbar. Source: over 2 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: over 2 years ago
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Quicksilver mentions (13)

  • Should I worry about using Raycast on MacOS?
    There are these open source alternatives, I haven’t checked their privacy policies or their code Maybe try and report back? Https://www.cerebroapp.com Https://qsapp.com Https://ueli.app Https://github.com/ParthJadhav/Verve. Source: 11 months ago
  • The best Mac Apps to unlock your max potential (recommended by users of r/MacOs )
    Should add Quicksilver. It's the first app I install on my Macs. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Boomer Wants to Learn Mac
    Spotlight-esque apps for enhanced keyboard driven productivity (pick one): Raycast Alfred Quicksilver. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Resolving the Great Undo-Redo Quandary
    For a browsable clipboard history on macOS, I recommend LaunchBar (https://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/; docs at https://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/ClipboardHistory.html). I used to use the Clipboard Plugin of the free and open source app Quicksilver (https://qsapp.com/), which worked fine but was slightly less streamlined. Some people prefer Alfred (https://www.alfredapp.com/help/features/clipboard/). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Shortcat – Manipulate macOS masterfully, minus the mouse
    This is great. Reminds me of QuickSilver[1]. I'm evaluating HomeRow[2] for a VIM driving the Mac OS, will try this as well. I love how: a. Accessibility features are making the OS more accessible for everyone through automation b. Good the accessibility implementation is on the Mac that most applications are inherently compatible with solutions like this. [1]: https://qsapp.com/ [2]: https://www.homerow.app/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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.

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

Listary - Listary is a revolutionary search utility for Windows

dmenu - dmenu is a dynamic menu for X, originally designed for dwm.

Gnome Do - Simple, sleek, swift, smart. Do. GNOME Do allows you to quickly search for many items present on your desktop or the web, and perform useful actions on those items. GNOME Do is inspired by Quicksilver & GNOME Launch Box.