LaunchBar is a productivity utility that offers a surprisingly intuitive way to search and get access to any info kept on your computer or on the Web. It provides instant access to your apps, documents, contacts, and bookmarks, to your music library, to search engines and more, just by entering short abbreviations of the searched item’s name. 

Hit Command-Space to bring LaunchBar’s input window up, type in an arbitrary abbreviation, and as soon as you start typing LaunchBar displays the best matching choices, ready to be opened immediately.  There are also other features and shortcuts like “Send To”, “Open Instantly”, “Instant Send”, etc.

In my opinion, there is 1 reason why LaunchBar is worth the $29 price tag…

“ClipMerge”

With ClipMerge, you can combine copies (as in “Command-C”) into one clipboard object. 

ClipMerge works like this: Select and copy some text, using Command-C. Now, before pasting anything, select and copy some more text, this time typing Command-C and C again (while still holding down the Command key). Both selections are now on LaunchBar’s PasteBoard. You can repeat this multiple times to add more selections. Whenever a ClipMerge copy occurs, LaunchBar plays a “stapler sound.” (That’s the fun part!)

When you paste, the combined “copies” appear. This could be really helpful during sermon prep. For example, if you want to copy several quotes from Bible.com or BibleGateway.com, or if you wanted to copy some text from an article or from a past Evernote archive you could combine the separate quotes and use just one paste command to transfer them to your main sermon doc.

A seriously game-changing tool if you are looking for a more efficient way to collect info and assemble your notes.

Have you been using LaunchBar? What is your “one” feature that makes it worth it?