LaunchBar is an award winning productivity utility that offers an amazingly intuitive and efficient way to control your computer.

LaunchBar provides instant access to thousands of files and folders, contacts and bookmarks, applications and preference panes just by entering short abbreviations of the searched item's name.

All you have to do is hit Command-Space to bring LaunchBar's input window to front, enter an arbitrary abbreviation, and as soon as you start typing LaunchBar displays the best matching choices, ready to be opened immediately.

Here are some key features of "LaunchBar":

User Interface:
· New application icon (designed by Bonsai Studio).
· Redesigned index window.
· Redesigned preferences window.
· Display of custom folder icons.
· German localization.
· Option to hide LaunchBar’s Dock icon (see LaunchBar preferences > Advanced).

Quick Look support:
· Press Space (or Command-Y) to preview the selected item with Quick Look.
· Press Command-Option-Y to run Quick Look full screen.
· Also works with Address Book items (cards, groups), text items, clipboard history items.

Clipboard History:
· Seamless integration in LaunchBar’s standard interface.
· Unique features such as stack operation (last-in/first-out), ClipMerge, etc.
· ClipMerge: Combines subsequent Copy operations into one clipboard object.
· Quick Look integration.
· Customizable Ignore List to protect sensitive data.

iCal support:
· Added support for iCal calendars.
· The new Calendars indexing rule provides a list of all iCal calendars.
· Create events and to-do items via LaunchBar: Select a calendar and press Space.
· Events are entered in the format description @ date [and time]
· To-do items are entered in the format description or description > due date.
· Various options for entering dates, times and durations.
· See the LaunchBar Help for details about the input syntax.

Actions:
· Dedicated Actions indexing rule (replaces the former Scripts indexing rule).
Lots of new Actions:
· Compress actions to create ZIP or tar.gz archives
· Image Manipulation actions: Resize Image, Rotate Image, Flip Image
· Application control actions: Quit, Force Quit, Quit All
· Utility actions: Start Screen Saver, Set Desktop Background, Show IP Address, Copy as Plain Text, etc.
· See the Actions indexing rule for the complete list of available actions.
· Improved support for custom actions. Put your custom AppleScripts or shell scripts in ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Actions. This folder is automatically indexed by LaunchBar.
· Improved iTunes Fast Forward / Rewind actions (invoking the action again switches back to playback).
· The Reveal action (Command-Return) works with a wider range of items (Address Book groups, Albums, Artists, several indexing rules, etc.)
· Improved Search Template operations: Press Shift-Space (or Shift-Return) to reuse the most recent search string with a different search engine.
· Added support for sending items to Address Book Groups (e.g. to send a file to multiple recipients).
· Invoking the Speak Text action now automatically selects the Stop Speaking action to make it easier to interrupt the speech output.

File Operations:
· Enhanced Send to Folder functionality. The desired file operation (Move, Copy, etc.) can now be selected by pressing additional modifier keys. For example, Command-Return moves the file(s), Option-Return copies the file(s).
· Asynchronous file operations to avoid blocking when copying large files.
· Option to replace existing files when performing a copy/move operation.
· Command-A can be used to create multiple file selections.
· Improved file system browsing: Press Command-Right Arrow to see a folder’s contents sorted by modification date.
· When renaming a file, pressing Tab selects the filename extension.

Indexing:
· The new Services indexing rule provides convenient access to commands from the Mac OS X Services menu.
· Added Firefox 3 support (Note: you may have to delete and recreate your existing Firefox indexing rules to update them to the latest version).
· Improved iPhoto support (added indexing of events).
· Much improved Development Resources indexing rule, now indexes the entire ADC Core Reference Library and the Developer Tools Reference Library.

Calculator:
· Calculator is now based on Unix bc.
· Dedicated keyboard shortcut (can be configured in LaunchBar preferences > Calculator).
Scientific calculations:
· Logarithms: ln (natural), ld (binary), log (base 10)
· Power: exp, pow
· Trigonometry: sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan
· Fractions: gcd (greatest common divisor), lcm (least common multiple), rem (remainder)
· Trigonometry modes (Radian, Degree, Grad)
· Function Shortcuts: Uppercase letters can be used to enter function names more quickly. For example, type S45 to get sin(45), or type Q2 to get sqrt(2).
· Extensible via custom macros. Put your bc macro files in ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Calculator

Keyboard Shortcuts:
· Fully customizable hotkeys for LaunchBar search, Spotlight search, Calculator and Clipboard History.
· Modifier Taps: Tapping a modifier key can now be used to activate LaunchBar and to invoke Instant Send.
· The LaunchBar window can now be resized via keyboard by pressing Control-Shift-Left/Right.

Other:
· LaunchBar is now scriptable via AppleScript.
· Option to check for software updates automatically.

Bug Fixes and Improvements:
· Improved performance.
· Improved compatibility with iTunes 8.
· Improved compatibility with third party address book applications such as Contactizer Pro.
· Much improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard.
· Numerous detail improvements and bug fixes.

Limitations:

· 30 days trial

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Note: Due to a necessary change in the internal representation of service items, existing abbreviation bindings for these items are not preserved. It may be necessary to re-train (or re-assign) the affected abbreviations.
· Fixed: Services didn’t work on non-English systems.
· Improved Services indexing, avoiding duplicates if an application is installed twice or more.
· Fixed a memory leak during Services indexing.
· Fixed an issue causing the “open location” AppleScript command to fail if invoked in the context of LaunchBar.
· Fixed an issue with “Hide Dock Icon”.
· Fixed: Due to a bug in Mac OS X some categories were labeled with an incorrect name (e.g. Preview Documents instead of PDF Documents).
· Fixed: Sending text to applications by pressing Tab didn’t work with some applications and it didn’t work at all on non-English systems.
· Added Wolfram Alpha search template to factory configuration.