Keyboard Shortcuts

LaunchBar provides a number of system wide keyboard shortcuts for quick access to frequently used features.

Global LaunchBar Activation Shortcut

By default LaunchBar can be activated using the Command-Space keyboard shortcut.

In this documentation “Command-Space” is used as a synonym for the activation shortcut, despite the fact that you can choose a different shortcut in the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of LaunchBar Preferences.

Pressing this shortcut not only activates LaunchBar, but also reliably resets LaunchBar to an initial state for starting a new abbreviation search. It aborts any pending text input, abbreviation search, sub-search or send-to operation.

Command-Space conflicts with other applications

Command-Space is by far the most conveniently accessible shortcut. And once you’ve got used to LaunchBar, you will probably invoke this shortcut very often, therefore convenient access is an important consideration.

Unfortunately the Command-Space shortcut may conflict with other applications that also use this convenient shortcut by default.

Command-Space conflicts with Spotlight

The Command-Space shortcut conflicts with the Mac OS X default shortcut for the Spotlight menu. You should therefore choose a different shortcut either in the Spotlight pane of System Preferences or in the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of LaunchBar Preferences.

A convenient, easy to remember set of shortcuts for system wide search tasks is Command-Space for LaunchBar, Command-Option-Space for the Spotlight Menu and Command-Option-Control-Space for the Spotlight Window.

Command-Space conflicts with “Zoom Tool” in Adobe programs

Command-Space is also used to activate the “Zoom Tool” in Adobe programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. You can use the following technique to work around this conflict: If you press Space-Command instead of Command-Space in Photoshop/Illustrator (press the space bar before the Command key) you get the Zoom Tool instead of invoking the Command-Space shortcut.

Command-Space conflicts with Input Menu

If you wish to use the Mac OS X Input menu shortcut for switching input sources (which also defaults to Command-Space), you can choose a different shortcut in System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources.