Macworld recently published a series of articles that described what they considered to be essential categories of Mac utilities. They decided on launchers, text expanders, clipboard managers and automation tools. I generally agree with these categories, because they are always the first programs I install on a fresh computer. These types of programs are also pivotal to increased productivity on your Mac. Take a look at what applications me and the Macworld editors prefer, and then give us your choices in the comments.

Launchers

There are really two forms of launcher applications: those that use the mouse, and those that are keyboard-driven. For mouse users, Macworld recommends DragThing as the best choice if you’re looking for a powerful application. I’ve always favored keyboard-based launchers, so I haven’t used any of the mouse-based options for very long, so I can’t say much about these. However, I have looked at DragThing briefly and was very impressed with the amount of flexibility available.

For the keyboard launchers, Macworld unsurprisingly recommended LaunchBar, which is my personal favorite. Quicksilver is very popular, but it isn’t in active development anymore and is not very stable on Snow Leopard. Even though Quicksilver is free, I still think it’s worth it to pay for LaunchBar and get something that won’t crash on you. Another contender is Butler, which has even more features and customizability than LaunchBar. At the moment, however, it is a bit too complicated for most users. But Macworld points out that the developer will be releasing an update that might solve this problem. If you need the extra features that Butler offers, then it is probably your best bet. Otherwise, you should go with LaunchBar.

Text Expanders

For anyone who uses their computer for more than an hour a day, a text expander application can save a lot of time by filling in common, repetitive bits of text by typing in a short abbreviation. The gold standard, and the program favored by Macworld, is TextExpander. TextExpander has the most features of any expander, especially with the new 3.0 update, and also enjoys the largest following. However, while I have tried very hard to like TextExpander, I just can’t use it. I love all the features, but there are a few glaring problems that keep me from adopting it.

The biggest problem I’ve had is that the expansions are too slow, which often leads to errors. I don’t think I’m a particularly fast typist, but when I use short expansions, the expanded text usually is either repeated for some reason or my curser ends up in the middle of the text so that I have to click back to the end of the expansion. I don’t know why other people don’t have this problem, but it makes the program absolutely unusable for me. Hopefully they can improve this soon.

Another problem is that TextExpander doesn’t allow you to choose whether a snippet will expand immediately or after a delimiter character on a per-snippet basis: they only have a global setting. Maybe I’m abnormal, but I generally expand immediately after spelling corrections but require a delimiter after things like email signatures.

There are also a few other little glitches like the auto-capitalization and removal of double-capitals features failing. I really want to use TextExpander because of its great feature set (including a cool iPhone app), but until they fix my problems with it, I have to stick with something else.

Right now I’m using Typinator. It doesn’t have the most features, but it’s lightning fast: most of the time I can’t even see the expansion happen. I recently downloaded TypeIt4Me, and it looks good, but I haven’t given it much of a trial. It is also missing the feature to set how expansions are triggered for each snippet. If you want to try one of these applications, I would recommend you start out with TextExpander, and if you have any problems with it, you can switch over to Typinator.

Clipboard Managers

I discovered clipboard managers only recently, because I didn’t know there was anything wrong with the standard copy and paste functionality built into OSX. But after being battered by articles about the best clipboard managers and why everyone needs one, I finally gave them a try. Now I can hardly use a computer without one.

Macworld recommends Jumpcut for anyone who wants a barebones application to try out without spending any money. Jumpcut might be a good introduction, but I don’t think it really gives a complete picture of what is possible with a clipboard manager. For one thing, it can only handle text, which limits its functionality quite a bit. Also, you can only access your clipboard through a menu bar icon, which I think hurts its ease of use.

For me, an essential feature of any clipboard manager is the ability to open up the clipboard with a keyboard shortcut, select an item, and then paste it by releasing the keyboard shortcut. This makes it incredibly easy to paste into a document without leaving the keyboard, and it also mimics the standard cmd-v shortcut for pasting that most people are used to. As far as I can tell, the only clipboard manager that has this ability is CopyPaste Pro. This application has a lot of other great features and is my pick of the group. Macworld also recommends CopyPaste Pro, but slightly favored PTHPasteboard Pro for its syncing, search and statistics abilities. So, if you need these things, you might try PTHPasteboard instead.

I actually don’t use a dedicated clipboard manager. Instead, I use the built-in clipboard history feature of LaunchBar. It doesn’t have quite as many features as the high-end dedicated programs, but it’s already part of my workflow and has a great implementation of the keyboard-shortcut pasting functionality I described. If you have LaunchBar already, turn on this feature in the settings and see how it works for you. Otherwise, I would try out the trial of CopyPaste Pro and see how it improves your workflow.

Automation Tools

These applications allow you to perform even the most complex tasks by using keyboard shortcuts, snippets, system events and other triggers. They are incredibly powerful when you take the time to set them up, but this usually takes a good amount of time and dedication. There is a lot of overlap between automation tools and other utilities because most of them can perform text expansion and launch applications. Because of this, I haven’t really found a need for these programs. I did look at QuickKeys for a bit and was impressed by the vast array of features, and I’m sure I could do some cool things with it if I spent the time. If you think you might use something like this, try out QuickKeys or Keyboard Maestro and see how they work for you.

Apple makes a great operating system, and it works well for casual users. However, for people that use their computer a lot, these utilities are essential. If you’re not using any of these programs, try some out now and I’m sure you will see a boost in your productivity.

Last week, I discussed a few ways to improve your productivity with the keyboard. This week, I’ll continue with some slightly more advanced techniques. One thing I forgot to mention last time, was the most important way to improve your productivity on your computer, and that is to learn to type faster. I’m shocked I’m shocked to see how many people still hunt and peck at their keyboards. If you spend any meaningful time at a computer, you need to be able to type quickly.

Move the Arrows

The main reason using the keyboard to navigate your computer improves speed so much is because you don’t have to take time to move your hands to and from the home row. Other than moving down to the trackpad from time to time, the only reason for my fingers to move is to use the arrow keys. This is especially annoying when I’m moving around a document making edits, where I have to switch from typing to arrows constantly. I found a solution to this in the form of KeyRemap4MacBook. I mentioned this app in an earlier post, but I want to bring it up again, because it’s essential for efficient keyboard-based navigation.

I use this little preference pane to remap option-j,k,l and i to the arrow keys. And, because I earlier remaped my caps lock key to option, I can easily switch between typing and moving the cursor. One cool thing that I’ve been using a lot lately is hitting cmd-option-k to open a folder or file while navigating in the Finder. If you enter numbers more than you use the arrow keys, you can set up your right-hand keys to as a number pad. I suggest you try this out for a while and see how it improves your speed your computer.

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