What Is The Best Way To Launch Apps On Your Mac?

There are many ways to launch apps on your Mac: LauncPad, Spotlight, double-clicking apps or documents, the Dock, Siri and more. So which is best? Let's look at each one of them and weigh the advantages and disadvantages.

Comments: 9 Responses to “What Is The Best Way To Launch Apps On Your Mac?”

    Douglas Brace
    5 years ago

    One that I recommend is to add the "Applications" folder to the "Dock" and set it to "Display as > Folder" and "View content as List" (or "View content as Grid").

    Laraine Barker
    5 years ago

    I've always liked to use keyboard shortcuts to launch an app or switch to another one. In the old days I used Now Utilities/Action Utilities and I now use Keyboard Maestro. I hated the dock when it came out and haven't changed my mid.

    Kurt Szeluga
    5 years ago

    I use the four-finger pinch on the trackpad to open the launch pad, then swipe left/right as needed to find and select the app I want. This works for me because I have arranged my apps so that most of the apps I use are on a couple of pages and I sort of have their location memorized, so I can find them quickly. I do like your Spotlight method and may use that as well.

    Robert Rutledge
    5 years ago

    A mix of situation dependent methods serves me best but my main tool is Keyboard Maestro for which I have 4 row (modifiers) 20 column reference matrix mounted behind my keyboard for opening a variety of file, apps, folders, URLs, etc. - great time saver.

    nick
    5 years ago

    CMD-Space is my favourite, doesn't get much easier than that, most apps come up with auto-complete after a couple keystrokes.

    Philip Noguchi
    5 years ago

    Besides the builtin keyboard shortcuts, my favorite launcher is Alfred 4. While Alfred 4 does have a Power something module that is fairly expensive, you don't need that module to launch applications, so it is a free app launcher. The default keyboard option-space calls up a window where you can start to type in the name of an app; only a few letters are needed most of the time to get a scrolling list of potential applications..

    Tim A
    5 years ago

    7:26 minutes in...
    Actually, just as double clicking on a TextEdit file opens it in TextEdit so too will double clicking a Safari .webloc open it in Safari.

    Gerry Taylor
    5 years ago

    Setting up Launchpad as a "hot corner" (settings > dock > hot corners @ lower left corner) is pretty quick. Hot corners is a nice choice for lotsa things if you're a track pad person.

    Ed Adams
    5 years ago

    I've used Alfred for years and it easily the best way to do all of spotlight and a lot more.

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