Being More Productive with LaunchBar
Table of Contents
The right tools can save you tons of time. One of these tools is LaunchBar. This post shows you how to be more productive as a developer with this little app.
Save Typing Time with Snippets
No matter if it's for an email or when coding: if you find yourself writing something again and again, you should create a "Snippet". You can then simply type a few characters from a Snippet's name - and LaunchBar automatically fills the text into the currently active textfield. [→ documentation]
Open in Terminal
As developers, we often need to perform commands in the Terminal. LaunchBar allows you to open a Terminal session in the current path - simply by pressing CMD + T.
Even better yet: you can directly perform a command on a selected file by pressing CMD+SHIFT+T. This is great e.g. for changing a file's permissions or opening it in Vim.
Search Documentation
By creating a new indexing rule, you can extend LaunchBar's searching powers - e.g. onto your most frequented documentation. I added a custom "jQuery" web indexing rule that allows me to search the jQuery API documentation right from within LaunchBar: [→ documentation]
Browse - and Sort by Date
LaunchBar's browsing capabilities are great by themselves. However, with a simple trick, they can even get more useful: when drilling down into the contents of a folder with the right arrow key, keep CMD pressed. This will sort the folders contents by modification date. (Or use SHIFT+CMD+arrow right to sort by date added.)
Clipboard History
I've "lost" countless valuable clipboard contents by pressing CMD+C just a bit too quickly. Now, I've configured CMD+ALT+\ to show my last 10 clipboard entries with LaunchBar: [→ documentation]
Tower Repository Bookmarks
LaunchBar comes with direct integration for our Tower Git client. You can easily browse your repository bookmarks and open them directly from LaunchBar.
