LaunchBar 5 - Release Notes

LaunchBar 5.0.2 - November 4, 2009

• 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.

LaunchBar 5.0.1 - October 20, 2009

• Fixed a rare crashing issue related to Services indexing.

LaunchBar 5 Final Version - October 20, 2009

For a general overview of new features and improvements,
please see the What’s new in LaunchBar 5 section.

What’s new in LaunchBar 5

Changes specific to this release

• Much improved Services indexing and invocation (the former implementation didn’t work reliably on Snow Leopard).
• Added “Finder > Recent Folders” functionality (select Finder and press Right Arrow or space bar).
• Added “Add to Things” action.
• Added Google Blog Search to factory search templates.
• Improved indexing of ADC developer documentation.
• Improved detection of current Firefox profile.
• Improved Show in Index / Assign Abbreviation functionality.
• Improved input of keyboard shortcuts in preferences window.
• The “Party Shuffle” actions have been renamed to “iTunes DJ”.
• The “Play Instant Send sound effect” preference option is now turned off by default to prevent delays when invoking Instant Send.
• The Send to LaunchBar service is now only installed if Instant Send is actually used.
• Fixed: Move & Replace didn’t work on Snow Leopard when attempting to replace a file package.
• Fixed: Copy / Move didn’t work on Snow Leopard when the filename contained a slash character.
• Fixed: iCal input failed to create all-day event when the year was separated by comma.
• Fixed: Firefox bookmarks index contains hidden items.
• Fixed an issue with display of keyboard shortcuts for some non-English keyboard layouts.
• Fixed: Search in iTunes didn’t work.
• Fixed: The Services menu appeared twice in contextual menus.
• Fixed: Quick Look of symlink now shows a preview of the original file.
• Fixed an issue with Xcode > Recent Projects access.
• Fixed a rare threading issue when prefetching application icons.

LaunchBar 5 Release Candidate 4 - August 28, 2009

• This version is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

LaunchBar 5 Release Candidate 3 - June 16, 2009

• Improved Send-to support allowing to send text to a wider range of applications.
• Improved TinyURL actions, adding “http://” prefix if missing.
• Fixed an issue with calendar input.

LaunchBar 5 Release Candidate 2 - May 30, 2009

• Clipboard History ignore list to protect sensitive data copied from applications such as Keychain Access. The list can be configured in Preferences > Clipboard.
• Enhanced “display in large type” AppleScript command: Added optional arguments “after delay” and “with sound”.
• Improved ClipMerge compatibility with third party applications.
• Improved Search in Spotlight: Search strings in double quotes are now left unchanged to allow phrase searches.
• Improved handling of URLs with fragment identifier.
• Improved “Make TinyURL” action.
• Added “Copy as TinyURL” action.
• The “perform action” AppleScript command now expects the action name parameter to be non-localized.
• Fixed: Calculator input didn’t accept plus sign in exponent.
• Fixed: Changing LaunchBar’s selection from within custom actions failed under some circumstances.
• Revised documentation.

LaunchBar 5 Release Candidate 1 - April 30, 2009

• When creating iCal events, it’s now possible to specify an alarm. If no alarm is specified, the default alarm setting of iCal preferences is applied.
• The Clipboard History can now also been used while entering text within LaunchBar, e.g. in Search Templates, Calculator, Open Location, when renaming files, etc.
• 30-day trial period.
• Additional built-in actions: Hide, Hide Others (Usage: Select app, press Tab, select action), Make TinyURL, Show Type and Creator, Copy Screenshot of Selected Area, Copy Screenshot of Selected Window.
• Improved “file exists at destination” dialog: The Stop button can now be triggered with the Escape key and the Don’t Replace button (which only appears when moving more than one item) with Command-D.
• Addressing an issue on Mac OS X 10.4 when opening LaunchBar automatically at login.
• Fixed: Some actions didn’t display localized title during text input.
• Several other, minor bug fixes.

LaunchBar 5 Beta 7 - March 31, 2009

• Registration: It’s now possible to register the software. License keys are available at http://www.obdev.at/launchbar/order.html. The built-in evaluation license expires on May 1, 2009.
• Send-to (pressing Tab) now allows to select text files to perform “Append Text”.
• When pasting URLs to the “Open Location” field, surrounding quotes and angle brackets are now removed automatically.
• Updated search templates in factory configuration for MacUpdate and VersionTracker.
• Fixed an issue when attempting to move a folder with insufficient access permissions.
• Fixed an issue with “Force Quit” in app switcher.
• Fixed: Moving/Copying files with a slash in their name didn’t work.
• Fixed: The Replace option didn’t work for “Make Alias” and “Make Symlink” actions.
• Fixed: Instant Send didn’t work in Safari 4 on German systems.
• Fixed: Browsing similar URLs (by pressing the Right Arrow key) did no longer work.

LaunchBar 5 Beta 6 - February 27, 2009

• Extended set of Clipboard History default actions. It’s now possible to choose between “Copy”, “Paste” and “Copy and Paste”, and to specify “As Plain Text” separately for each of these actions. Note that the corresponding preference setting from previous betas is not automatically translated to this new scheme, so you have to select your preferred default action in Preferences > Clipboard.
• Improved text input.
• The “Enter Text” action now allows to send the entered text directly by pressing Tab (it’s no longer necessary to press Return first).
• When a text item is selected, pressing Space now allows to edit the text.
• Improved “Open Location” action to ensure a URLs RFC 2396 compliance (non-ASCII characters are automatically encoded using UTF-8).
• iCal input now accepts three digit time specifiers (e.g. 530pm)
• iCal input now accepts A and P to specify a.m. and p.m.
• New optional Calculator setting: Switch to Calculator when typing “=”
• Calculator now accepts typographic math symbols such as × and ÷
• Improved stability in case of corrupted text-to-speech installation (LaunchBar sometimes crashed due to corrupted voice file in the /System/Library/Speech/Voices folder).
• Fixed an issue in app switcher. Pressing F (without any modifier keys) triggered the “Force Quit” action.
• Fixed a performance issue with the “Add to Party Shuffle” action.
• Revised documentation.

LaunchBar 5 Beta 5 - January 28, 2009

• The clipboard history selection is now preserved. Reopening the clipboard history now selects the previously selected history item.
• Fixed a bug causing the Mac OS X WindowServer process to slow down after turning off Clipboard History or ClipMerge.

LaunchBar 5 Beta 4 - January 26, 2009

• Firefox bookmarks and history indexing now also works while Firefox is running.
• Clipboard History > Select from history: Pressing Command-C during auto activation now copies the selected item and hides LaunchBar.
• Improved menu shortcuts in the “choose file operation” menu (digits instead of function keys).
• When an address book contact is selected, pressing Space no longer triggers Quick Look but lets you browse the contact details. Quick Look can still be invoked for these items with Command-Y.
• Added “Run Terminal Command” action.
• Added “Check for Updates” command to gear wheel menu.
• The “Save Text” action now also works in nonactivating mode.
• Text is now passed to Shell Script actions as a single argument.
• Fixed an issue with Japanese text input (pressing the space bar had no effect).
• Fixed: Search templates based on file-URLs didn’t work.
• Fixed: The “Copy” clipboard history action didn’t work in beta 3.
• Fixed an issue with Clipboard History. The image transparency of screenshots was not preserved.
• Fixed an issue when dragging items onto a selected folder in LaunchBar.
• Fixed an incompatibility with Typinator.
• Fixed an incompatibility between ClipMerge and Mac OS X 10.4 causing LaunchBar to refuse any keyboard input under some circumstances.

LaunchBar 5 Beta 3 - December 31, 2008

• New Clipboard History default action: Paste as Plain Text.
• The Clipboard History action “Copy and Paste” has been changed to “Paste”, so the current clipboard contents are no longer altered when pasting a clipboard history item.
• Added “Send to” support for Clipboard History items (by pressing the Tab key).
• Reduced memory footprint of Clipboard History.
• The Clipboard preferences help button now opens the correct help page.
• Creating iCal events: Several bug fixes and improvements when entering time and date:
  • The hour/minute separator (colon or dot) can now be omitted in non-ambiguous cases (e.g. Fri 0800-1030). However, it’s still necessary to enter the separator in ambiguous cases (Jan 13, 2010 vs. Jan 13, 20:10)
  • Fixed an issue when entering time ranges across noon or midnight (e.g. 10-12.30pm)
  • Fixed an issue when entering only weekday and time (e.g. Fri 7.30pm)
• Added “Recompress Image” actions.
• Fixed an issue when dragging multiple files onto LaunchBar’s Dock icon.
• Added missing German localization in software update check.
• Fixed an issue causing LaunchBar not to hide when started automatically at login.
• Fixed an issue with Instant Send / Get Finder Selection (Command-G) when there was nothing selected in Finder.
• The shortcut for “Run in Background” / “Execute in Background” has been changed from Shift-Return to Option-Return to resolve a conflict with the new “Apply last entered text to selected item” feature, which also uses the Shift-Return shortcut.
• The “Check Spelling While Typing” setting of LaunchBar’s input window is now preserved across restarts.
• Fixed some issues with Asian input methods in LaunchBar’s text input field.
• The ClipMerge sound effect can now be customized by providing one or more sound files in the ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Sounds/ClipMerge folder. If this folder contains more than one sound file, the sound effect will be chosen randomly.
• Improved ClipMerge when typing Command-C-C via key repeat (when Command-C is kept pressed until ClipMerge is performed).
• The Command-Space-Space app switcher can now be cancelled with Escape while the Command key is still pressed.
• Files can now be sent to Services menu actions via “Send to”.
• Fixed an issue causing launched applications not to become active (occurred only when running LaunchBar without a Dock icon).
• Fixed a crashing issue when invoking Entourage actions on computers not having Entourage installed.
• Fixed a rare crashing issue at startup.

LaunchBar 5 Beta 2 - December 15, 2008

• Fixed a number of issues with ClipMerge. Most notably, all incompatibilities with third party applications should now be resolved.
• ClipMerge now requires “Enable access for assistive devices” to be turned on in Universal Access Preferences.
• Fixed an issue causing Clipboard History to contain duplicate entries under some circumstances.
• The Quick Look preview panel can now be scrolled with the scroll wheel.
• Fixed an issue with Calculator causing an “Error” result at certain calculations.
• Fixed an issue with Calculator when entering numbers in exponential notation (e.g. 1e-6).
• Pressing Space now correctly performs a deep sub-search in case of indexing rules.
• Fixed an issue when moving files across volume boundaries causing the moved item not to be removed from its previous location.
• Improved error handling when moving files.
• Fixed an issue when turning LaunchBar’s Dock icon on or off in Preferences > Advanced.
• Corrected keyboard shortcut of “Show Index” command shown in LaunchBar’s gear wheel menu.
• Showing the correct 10.5 style folder icon in case of application folders.

LaunchBar 5 Beta 1 - December 5, 2008

• First beta release of LaunchBar 5. See the LaunchBar 5 Beta page for details about new features and improvements.

Firefox 3 bookmarks and history

If your current LaunchBar configuration already contains indexing rules for Firefox 2 bookmarks and/or history, you first have to delete these existing rules and then re-add them to the configuration to make them work with Firefox 3.

New location of configuration and preferences files

LaunchBar 5 uses new locations for storing its configuration and preferences information. When you run LaunchBar 5 for the very first time, your existing LaunchBar 4 configuration data is copied to the new location.

LaunchBar 4

LaunchBar 5

As a consequence, when switching between LaunchBar 4 and 5, configuration changes made in LaunchBar 5 are not reflected in LaunchBar 4 and vice versa.