Command Bars

Command Bars:

Maggie Appleton (via Dan Grover):

Command bars are command-line bars that pop up in the middle of the screen when you hit a certain keyboard shortcut.

[…]

Rather than remembering which sub-sub-sub menu a function lives in, users need only remember its name.

They don’t even have to remember its exact name. Fuzzy search can help them find it by simply typing in similar names or related keywords.

I’ve long used LaunchBar as a universal command bar, but now some of the productivity apps that I use daily have their own versions with app-specific commands. In BBEdit, it’s Go ‣ Command… (Command-Shift-U). In Tower, it’s File ‣ Quick Actions (Command-Shift-A). And macOS adds a built-in command searcher to each app’s Help menu (Command-?). Part of the appeal is discovering new commands or quickly locating infrequently used ones, but I also find it useful for commonly used commands in an app where the convenient keyboard shortcuts are already in use.

[Yeah. I dig them. I’ve been using Alfred for quite a while…]

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s