If you place text clippings in an AliasMenu menu, selecting that clipping will actually paste it into the frontmost application. By editing the names of items in the AliasMenu Folder (as explained on the Help screen), you can create keyboard shortcuts for items, reorder items, and create groups of items that are opened all at once. For example, an alias of your Documents folder becomes a new Documents menu. Any folder or folder alias that you place into the Alias-Menu Folder ( ~/Library/AliasMenu) will automatically become a new, hierarchical menu in the menu bar. The more I use MaxMenus, the more things I figure out to use it for.įigure 6.12: piPop's pop-up (left) and tear-off (right) menusįinally, one of the easiest menu utilities to use is the shareware AliasMenu ( ). Finally, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to any item in any MaxMenus menu by selecting the item and then pressing the key combination you want to assign to that item. You can even grab an item in any MaxMenus menu, and then drag it to the Finder, to the Dock, or to any other MaxMenus menu. In addition, you can also act on menu items-if you have a menu that includes running applications, you can quit, relaunch, force quit, or switch to any of them using the mouse or keyboard. I then drop the file onto one of the application icons (Figure 6.11). Whenever I have a file that I want to open in a certain application, I simply press the keys to activate the menu, and it pops up directly under the cursor. For example, I've created a menu that contains my favorite drag-and-drop applications and all currently running applications, and assigned a keyboard combination to that menu. However, MaxMenus is especially impressive in this capacity because of the ability to drag files onto application icons in menus, and the ability to create menus that contain both frequently used applications and currently running applications. Snard also comes in a menu bar version everything you can do using Snard in the Dock, as I described earlier, you can do from the menu bar. I've already mentioned a few of the best, Snard (earlier in this chapter) and MaxMenus (in Chapter 5). If you're the type who likes to access things through menus, there are plenty of menu-based utilities to access files, folders, and applications. I've divided this discussion into two groups of utilities: file access and launching utilities that are very different from the Dock, and utilities that are Dock-like in their solutions.
Alternative to launchbar for mac software#
So instead I'm going to talk about third-party software that do Dock-type things exceptionally well. I use the word in quotes because nothing is going to do everything the Dock can do and chances are you aren't unhappy with everything about it. With that in mind, let's look at some "alternatives" to the Dock. Putting such diverse functionality in one place, and keeping it easy to use, means that it isn't going to be as comprehensive at anything as some people would like. It launches, it switches, it stores, it controls, it slices, it dices. Part of the problem is that it's really a jack-of-all-trades. Many of these complaints revolve around its inflexibility: you can't move it to a second monitor, you're locked into a single view, and so on-everyone has a complaint or two about the Dock. I already mentioned one-it can't hold a lot of items without becoming overcrowded-but there are others as well. Despite its functionality and ease of use, there are some common complaints heard about the Dock.
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