LaunchBar

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LaunchBar
Developed by	Objective Development
Initial release	1996
Latest release	4.3 / July 30, 2007
OS	Mac OS X
Genre	Application launcher
License	shareware
Website	http://www.obdev.at/launchbar/index.html

LaunchBar is a launch application for Mac OS X. It provides access to user's applications and files, by entering short abbreviations of the searched item's name. It uses an adaptive algorithm that 'learns' a user's preferred abbreviations for a particular application. For example, Adobe Photoshop may be launched by simply typing 'pho' after training and Interface Builder can be opened by typing 'ib' even though that sequence of characters does not appear anywhere in the name of the application.

[edit] History

LaunchBar began as a series of shell scripts for the NeXTSTEP platform, then migrated to OPENSTEP where it was developed into a full-fledged application. It was ported to Mac OS X in 2001 as LaunchBar 3.