REVIEW · LAUNCHER
Verdict: Yes, if you live on the keyboard: LaunchBar's adaptive abbreviations, file browsing, actions and clipboard tools are deep and mature, and you can even keep using it for free with occasional break reminders. As a file finder it is best at items whose names you can abbreviate; for searching inside documents it hands you to Spotlight.
29 October 2026 · By Ishtiaque Hossain · 4 minute read · reviews LaunchBar 6
Looking for a file you can describe but not name? Try Shlexball. The first 30 searches are free and need no account.
macOS 15 or later. Apple silicon. 16 GB memory. On a phone? Email yourself the link.
This review is based on LaunchBar's own pages, read on 14 October 2026. Every claim links to the page it came from. We are the makers of Shlexball, so we say plainly where LaunchBar does better.
| Price | 30-day trial, then free to use with occasional break reminders; Single and Family licences on the order page |
| Licences | Single: one user on many Macs or many users on one Mac; Family: up to 5 computers in one household |
| What it finds | Apps, documents, bookmarks, contacts, calendars, music and more, by abbreviation |
| File tools | Browse the file system, view metadata, move, rename, compress and tag files |
| Made by | Objective Development |
| Best for | Keyboard users who want one tool for launching, files and quick actions |
LaunchBar 6 is an adaptive app launcher and document browser. One keyboard shortcut opens it, and you reach applications, documents, bookmarks and more by typing short abbreviations of their names.
The abbreviations really are short: SP selects System Preferences, and the ranking adapts to your usage, so the items you pick most often come first.
Press the Right Arrow on an item to browse inside it. Type TED for TextEdit and press Right Arrow to see its recent documents, or select Finder and press Right Arrow for recent folders.
LaunchBar keeps its own index, updated in the background, built from indexing rules for applications, services, shortcuts, contacts, calendars, web bookmarks and history, the Music library, Finder tags and more.
LaunchBar doubles as a file manager. You can navigate to any file or folder from the keyboard, sort a folder by modification date, and copy, move, rename, compress or tag files and folders.
Category sub-search narrows a search to one kind of item: type JPI for the JPEG Images category, then press Space to search JPEG images only.
Info Browsing shows an item's metadata, such as image dimensions, colour profiles, Finder tags, file size and word counts, and can navigate into app packages and show a folder's invisible files.
Press Tab to send a selected item somewhere: open it in an app, move it to a folder, or attach it to an email to a contact.
LaunchBar includes a clipboard history with a ClipMerge feature that combines copies when you press Command-C twice, a snippet manager, a calculator with live results, calendar events and reminders, contacts, and web searches with live suggestions from Google, Wikipedia or DuckDuckGo.
Built-in actions cover everyday chores, from resizing images and creating ZIP archives to emptying the Trash and taking screenshots. You can write your own actions in AppleScript, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, PHP and more, or install ones other users share.
Usage Statistics shows which features you use most and which you have not discovered yet.
LaunchBar has an unusually friendly policy. After a 30-day trial you can keep using it for free as long and as often as you like; it just occasionally invites you to take a short break.
A Single licence lets one user run it on several computers, or several users on one computer. A Family licence covers up to 5 computers in one household for non-commercial use, and owners of older licences can upgrade at a reduced price.
The order page we read does not list the prices themselves, so check it before you buy.
For files you can name, LaunchBar is very fast, because abbreviations and adaptive ranking get you there in a few keystrokes.
Its own file content search works inside one selected plain text, rich text or HTML file. For searching the contents of documents across your Mac, it offers a Search in Spotlight action and its own hotkey for Spotlight search.
Keep LaunchBar for launching. For a document whose name you never knew, Shlexball finds files from a plain-English description of what you remember, searching names and the text inside files, including PDFs and Word documents.
Shlexball searches your folders directly, not only through the Spotlight index, and runs its language model on your Mac. The first 30 searches are free.
Keep LaunchBar for launching. For the document you can only describe, try Shlexball: 30 free searches.
▶ DOWNLOAD SHLEXBALLYes. After the 30-day trial, LaunchBar can be used for free as long and as often as you like; it occasionally asks you to take a short break.
It can search inside a selected plain text, rich text or HTML file, and it offers a Search in Spotlight action for searching document contents more widely.
A Single licence covers one user on multiple computers, or multiple users on one computer. A Family licence covers up to 5 computers in one household.
Yes. You can write custom actions in AppleScript, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, PHP and other languages, or install actions shared by other users.