I’d recommend everybody to try out Alfred, an app that looks like this:

Alfred let’s you start any app (image above) or  trigger apps through text input, for example searching songs on Spotify without having to start it first.

You open the quicklaunch window with ⌘+space and start typing, and Alfred will fetch you what you’re thinking about. It’s fast.

Launchy - an alternative for Linux and Windows users

Launchy is really the same thing, it works as a charm.

Why I prefer apps providing keyboard shortcuts for everything

  • It's fast, I always prefer to leave the mouse (-pad) for as long as possible
  • It thinks for me, the auto completion doesn't even need me to remember more than a letter or two of the app I'm looking for
  • The desktop/dock is much less cluttered since icons becomes kind of unnecessary
  • All keyboard, no mouse makes you look like a hacker and thereby you are more professional