Release Notes

Compatibility with macOS Mojave

This version of LaunchBar is compatible with macOS Mojave, but due to improved privacy protection in macOS Mojave, some LaunchBar features require additional permissions to be granted in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy:

• Indexing of Safari Bookmarks requires LaunchBar to be added to “Full Disk Access”. Otherwise LaunchBar won’t be able to read the bookmarks file, which is located in your Library folder.
• Instant Send and Get/Drop Finder Selection require LaunchBar to be added to “Accessibility”. Otherwise LaunchBar won’t be able to simulate a Command-C keystroke, which is necessary for reading the currently selected text or file.
• The Clipboard History also requires LaunchBar to be added to “Accessibility”. Otherwise LaunchBar won’t be able to simulate a Command-V keystroke, which is necessary when inserting data from the Clipboard History in other applications.

Dark Mode support

LaunchBar now supports Dark Mode in macOS Mojave. Note that the appearance of LaunchBar’s main interface is still determined by the selected theme, independent from the current system appearance. So if you’ve selected the Dark Mode in Mojave, you can choose one of the dark themes in LaunchBar (Dark or Base Dark).

In a future update there will be an option to automatically change LaunchBar’s theme in accordance with the current system appearance (provided that the chosen theme also provides a dark variant).

Other changes

• LaunchBar 6.10 now requires at least OS X 10.10 or later. If you are running an older OS version, you can download a compatible version here.

• Improved incrementing/decrementing integers during text input to preserve leading zeros.
• Fixed: Command-clicking didn’t work anymore for staging individual items in the list.
• Fixed a crash when attempting to move the LaunchBar window on macOS 10.11 and earlier.

Further improved compatibility with 1Password 7

• Info browsing of 1Password Login items (selecting the item in LaunchBar and pressing Right Arrow) now also provides access to the item’s Autofill Link. This link can be copy/pasted to other documents – opening them will then open the corresponding login page in your web browser and autofill the login form.
• It’s now possible (again) to open non-Login items (like credit cards, secure notes, etc.) via LaunchBar to opens 1Password’s summary window showing all the details of that item.
• It’s now possible (again) to trigger a search in 1Password by selecting the 1Password app in LaunchBar and then pressing Shift-Space.

New Features and Improvements

• Numeric increments during text input. You can now press Command-Up/Down during text input to increment/decrement a number at the cursor position by one, or press Shift-Command-Up/Down to increment/decrement it by ten. This comes quite handy in LaunchBar’s calculator, but can be used in many other situations as well, whenever numeric text input is involved (in custom actions, when renaming files, etc.).
• Indexing of Share Menu Actions can now be turned on/off separately in the Options pane of the Actions indexing rule.
• Improved handling of file items returned by a custom action during text input as a live result. It's now possible to invoke file actions on these files (like Send-to, Move, Copy, Rename, Duplicate, Get Info, etc.).
• Command-dragging the LaunchBar window now also works during text input.
• Improved “Enter Text” action: Shift-Return (to insert the entered text in the frontmost app) now also explicitly hides the LaunchBar app.
• Spaces in search template arguments are now only encoded with plus ("+") in case of HTTP(S) and x-launchbar URLs.
• Improved error handling for actions implemented as shell scripts.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: Clipboard History failed to detect images and PDF content copied from Safari.
• Fixed: Clipboard History > Ignore Applications didn't work for 1Password 7 if it was added manually in the preferences window.
• Fixed an issue with the “Browse Ulysses” action causing sections not to appear.
• Fixed a crash when passing text containing a NULL character to actions implemented as shell scripts.
• Fixed a crash when LaunchBar tried to determine whether another application can open documents and that application’s Info.plist was malformed.

Compatibility with 1Password 7

• If you have both version 7 and version 6 of 1Password installed on your computer, LaunchBar will by default index the items from the newer version. If you prefer to access the version 6 data instead, you can uncheck the “Prefer latest version of 1Password” option in the Options pane of the index window.

Other improvements and bug fixes

• Added support for accessing repositories in Tower 3
• Fixed an issue with LaunchBar’s built-in calculator when using custom bc definition files in ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Calculator
• Fixed: Indexing of birthdays could fail if a contact was linked across multiple accounts.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed various scripts that deal with phone numbers not working on macOS 10.13.2. This includes actions like “Call with iPhone”, “Call with Skype”, “Call with FaceTime”, and “Send iMessage”.
• Fixed an issue introduced in LaunchBar 6.9.3 where actions like “Compose iMessage” would send text as a file attachment instead of, you know, just text.
• Fixed revealing reminder items and clicking notifications after creating a reminder on macOS 10.13 not working.
• Fixed “Run iTerm Command” built-in action not working with newer versions of iTerm.
• Fixed an issue where an empty window would become visible when using SwitchResX.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing LaunchBar to hang under some circumstances when browsing the list with the arrow keys.
• Fixed another issue causing LaunchBar to become active when switching spaces.
• Fixed an issue in the Browse Ulysses action.

Improvements

• Updated the built-in “Browse Ulysses” action. It now supports the subscription, non-subscription and Setapp versions of Ulysses.
• Added support for LaunchBar actions to use images stored in an app’s asset catalog (Assets.car file).
• Added support for sending selected text to macOS Sharing Actions that normally only support sending files. You can now AirDrop any text from LaunchBar to another Mac or iOS device.
• Improved 1Password info browsing to allow opening of URLs.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Recent Documents of apps not updating on macOS High Sierra (10.13).
• Fixed an issue where an additional invisible window would be added to the list of LaunchBar’s windows for VoiceOver users on macOS High Sierra (10.13). This could also cause slowdowns in third-party app and window switchers.
• Fixed an issue where LaunchBar would sometimes steal the active app’s keyboard focus after switching spaces on macOS High Sierra (10.13).
• Fixed a bug that caused the Calculate MD5/SHA1/SHA256 Checksum actions to not work.
• Fixed LaunchBar causing macOS to ask if you want to download the Osaka font.
• Fixed emoji icons being cut off on macOS Sierra (10.12).
• Fixed missing contact images for contact that are stored in multiple accounts.

This version makes LaunchBar compatible with macOS High Sierra (10.13). In particular it addresses compatibility issues in the following areas:

• Emoji indexing
• Recent Documents browsing

Appearance

• Re-organized Themes.
• Changed Default Theme. The previous default theme is still available (it has been renamed to “Base”).
• Improved legibility in the new Default Theme.
• Modernized design of the index window.

Things 3 Integration

• Added support for Things 3.
• Much improved “Add to Things” action. The action now accepts multiple lines (typically via Send to) to generate multiple to-tos, one for each line. Provides feedback via user notification, describing what has been added.
• Added actions for opening lists in Things 3 (Inbox, Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday). These actions are accessible either directly via abbreviation search, or by browsing the Things application (select Things in LaunchBar and press Right Arrow).

1Password Integration

• Improved 1Password indexing.
• Improved opening 1Password logins.
• Removed legacy support for 1Password versions before 6.5.

Other Improvements

• Standard “Natural Scrolling” behavior in search result list.
• Improved URL input when entering a colon while the TLD is selected. This now inserts the colon before the trailing slash. Makes it easier to enter port numbers, like in http://example.com:80/
• Improved searching within results of custom actions.
• Improved Emoji skin tone support.
• Improved Instant Calculate to ignore IPv4 addresses.
• Disabled actions are no longer shown when browsing an application’s associated actions.
• Fixed handling of “actionArgument” in JavaScript based custom actions.
• Improved Safari Tabs action to work with Safari opened full screen on a different space.
• Fixed incorrect display of reminder item priorities.
• Fixed DuckDuckGo action. Due to a bug introduced in macOS 10.12.5 the search result wasn’t opened in the default browser (e.g. Safari) but in some other browser (e.g. Firefox).
• Fixed "Send iMessage" action (stopped working due to a bug in macOS 10.12.5).

Improved 1Password integration

• Thanks to the enhanced 3rd party integration of 1Password 6.5 we are now able to provide much more comprehensive access to your 1Password items.
• It’s now possible to access all kinds of items (not only logins but also credit cards, secure notes, etc.) from all vaults.
• 1Password categories (Logins, Passwords, Secure Notes, Credit Cards, Software Licenses, etc.) are now indexed. You can for example type CC to select 1Password’s “Credit Cards” category. You can then browse that category to get a list of all your credit cards stored in 1Password.
• Browsing 1Password by selecting the 1Password app and pressing Right Arrow now provides a list of all available 1Password categories.
• Opening items that don’t perform a login on a website are now showing a window for viewing and editing that item.

Actions

• New “Safari Tabs” action provides access to all tabs that are currently opened in Safari. Allows to quickly switch to one of those tabs with the keyboard.
• New “Font Awesome Icons” action. Provides a list of all icons available in Font Awesome. You can sub-search that list for a particular icon by name, then press right arrow to access details of that icon (Icon Identifier, Unicode, HTML snippet for inserting that icon in your web-page, a link to the icon’s Font Awesome web-page). Font Awesome icons can also be used in your custom LaunchBar actions. Just specify the icon’s “Icon Identifier” in Action Editor.
• New “Wiktionary” and “Wikiquote” actions with live suggestions.
• New localized “Wikipedia”, “Wiktionary” and “Wikiquote” actions to access those wikis in your preferred non-English language version (according to System Preferences > Language & Region > Preferred languages).
• Existing search templates for Wikipedia and Wiktionary are removed from the configuration. Please use the new actions instead. It may be necessary to re-train your abbreviations for these items.
• Improved indexing of macOS Sharing Service actions.
• Updated Sample Actions (they can be downloaded from obdev.at/launchbar/actions.html)

Improved Emoji support

• Emoji character names are now the same as those in the macOS Character Palette.
• It’s now possible to search for emoji by alternative names. For example, type SPORT to find the basketball emoji, or type SPOCK to find a greeting gesture from a place where no man has gone before.
• Links to Emojipedia (accessible via Info Browsing of an emoji that’s selected in LaunchBar) now work more reliably with all kinds of emoji, including skin tone modified versions.

Other Improvements

• Improved Calendar input allowing to specify alarms at the time of the event. Example: “Call mom @ 3pm !0min” or just “Call mom @ 3pm !0”
• Browsing the Contacts app now shows the Birthdays category, which provides a chronological list of all upcoming birthdays starting from today.
• Improved Info Browsing of indexing rules (showing number of indexed items, date of last index update and the item’s indexing rule).
• Improved Info Browsing of categories to show the number of items in that category.
• Improved Info Browsing allowing to sub-search the displayed item by their label.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: Browsing into an application to access recent documents or other items related to that app sometimes stopped working.
• Fixed: Calendar events and reminders were created without time zone information.
• The Clipboard History now shows the correct number of characters if the copied text contains emoji characters.
• Fixed: Blinking text cursor disappeared while typing in LaunchBar Calculator or while browsing suggestions during text input.
• Disabling an indexing rule now frees the memory occupied by items of that rule.

New Features and Improvements

• Added “Preferred Input Source” preference option, allowing to choose a keyboard input source that will be used in favor of the currently active input source while LaunchBar is active.
• Improved compatibility with macOS Sierra (10.12).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an incompatibility with Tower version 2.5.
• Fixed a bug in the built-in MD5, SHA1, and SHA256 checksum actions causing a wrong checksum being calculated for data larger than 4 GB. Furthermore the performance of these action has been significantly improved for large files.
• Fixed: The “Browse Ulysses” action did not work on OS X 10.9 and OS X 10.10.
• Fixed a crash in LaunchBar’s Action Editor.
• Fixed an issue causing the “Select Folder” contextual menu action in the Options pane of a folder indexing rule to stop working under some circumstances.
• Fixed a potential crash in the Clipboard History when copying RTF or RTFD data (happened in particular when copying data in Accordance.app).

Improved character icons for custom actions

• LaunchBar Actions and their result items that use a character as an icon using the previously-introduced character:X syntax can now specify the font in which the character should be rendered using a pseudo-URL-query like syntax or the iconFont property (result items only). Example: character:X?font=Futura
• For characters that cannot be rendered in the system font LaunchBar now uses a fallback mechanism to find an appropriate font.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a potential crash when an action returned a result item that had a path and icon set.
• Fixed an issue on OS X 10.9 causing the index window to fail opening the Options pane of some indexing rules.
• Fixed: Sorting by “date added” by pressing Shift-Command-Right didn’t work anymore. This also affected browsing the Downloads folder, which sorts by “date added” automatically.
• Fixed a crash when editing the “Skip Subfolders” or “Exclude Items” options of a folder indexing rule.

• Added support for Emoji, Font Awesome icons, and arbitrary characters as icons for LaunchBar Actions and their result items. More information is available in our developer documentation.
• Added setClipboardString() and clearClipboard() functions to LaunchBar JavaScript.
• New LaunchBar AppleScript property “expects abbreviation input”.
• Added Ulysses support. Conveniently browse your Ulysses library with LaunchBar.
• Added support for iTerm 2 version 2.9 or newer.
• Improved phone number handling in “Call with iPhone”, “Call with FaceTime” and “Call with Facetime Audio” actions.
• Improved handling of hanging action scripts written in AppleScript.
• Improved 1Password integration.
• Improved Clipboard History behavior with EagleFiler.
• Fixed: “Call with FaceTime Audio” action triggered video instead of audio call.
• Fixed: Shift-Return didn’t always open items in the current window.
• Fixed: Under certain circumstances, modifier keys in script-based actions did not work as expected.
• Fixed: Unexpected subtitle, label and badge behavior if script-based actions returned items with path.
• Fixed: Issues with resolving tilde and symlinks in paths of script-based actions’ result items.
• Other bugfixes and improvements.

• Fixed an incompatibility with OS X 10.9 and 10.10.
• Improved sort order of folder contents when browsing with the left/right arrow keys.

• Restored the previous behavior of ⌘V to paste clipboard data onto LaunchBar.
• Added “Drop From Clipboard” action (⌥⌘V). Applies the clipboard data (file, URL, text) to the currently selected item (opens a copied URL in the selected application, searches for a copied text with the selected search template, etc.)
• The DuckDuckGo action now supports ⇧↩ to instantly perform a search using the last entered text.
• Custom Actions can now declare to support ⇧↩ by turning on the new “Reapply last string argument with ⇧↩” option in Action Editor.
• Fixed: Alert Panels could be obscured by the LaunchBar input window.
• Fixed: Dragging files onto a folder that’s selected in LaunchBar didn’t work (the list of available file operations wasn’t shown, the LaunchBar window just disappeared).
• Fixed: When sending a file to a folder via Send To (by pressing the Tab key), the list of available file operations didn’t recognize the numeric keyboard shortcuts 1-6.
• Fixed: Issue when dragging text or files to the LaunchBar window.
• Other bug fixes and stability improvements.

New Features

• Added optional Modifier Tap for accessing Snippets. Can be configured in Preferences > Shortcuts.
• The iCloud Drive item can now be used as a target for Send To operations.
• Info Browsing of images in the Clipboard History now shows metadata like image dimensions, resolution, color profile, etc.
• Back browsing with the Left-Arrow key after invoking an action that returns new items now brings back the previous selection – either the action itself (if it was opened via Return or via Text Input), or the source item of a Send To operation (the item that was sent to the action via Tab).
• Improved Send To (pressing Tab) in Calculator. If there’s no text selected (i.e. the cursor is blinking), the result of the current calculation is sent, as before. But if you select a part of the calculation, only that selected text is sent.

iTunes

• Attempting to play a remote track while the computer is offline now shows a message explaining why the playback is currently not possible.
• When browsing the Albums category (which shows a list of all albums) the display now includes the album artist in addition to the album title.
• The iTunes/Now Playing info (shown when pressing Right Arrow while iTunes is selected) now displays artist or album information for the currently playing track.
• Improved heuristics to determine which tracks belong to the same album (should now work same as in iTunes).
• Fixed an issue causing some iTunes actions to fail if the iTunes Today Widget was enabled in Notification Center.
• Fixed an issue when re-indexing the iTunes Library.
• Fixed an issue with Identically Named Songs.

Improved Emoji Support

• Added a dedicated hotkey for opening the list of Emoji (Default is Shift-Command-Space).
• Browsing the Emoji indexing rule with Right Arrow now first shows a list of all Emoji Categories (like “Activity”, “Objects”, “Smileys & People”, etc.). Pressing Right Arrow again then only shows Emoji from the selected category. To get a flat list of all Emoji, browse the Emoji rule with the Space key.
• Emoji are now sorted by “last access”. The most recently used Emoji are therefore shown at the top of the list. You can still get all Emoji sorted alphabetically by browsing the Emoji rule with Command-Right.
• Added “Skin Colored Emoji” category. This category contains all Emoji whose skin tone can be modified.
• Info Browsing now provides a link to Emojipedia for the selected Emoji.

New Actions

• Added “Calculate SHA256 Checksum” action.
• Added actions for removing line breaks from text
  • Join Lines
  • Join Lines With Space
  • Join Lines With Comma
• Added “Send Little Snitch Feedback” action.
• Added “Send Micro Snitch Feedback” action.

Custom Actions

• Added support for Quick Look in the Resources tab of Action Editor.
• Improved include() JavaScript function: Now accepts absolute paths, resolves tilde (~) in path and resolves symbolic links in path.
• Added support for parallel HTTP requests in JavaScript.

Improvements

• “Copy (and Paste) File Contents” now works with more plain text file formats (including Markdown).
• Improved backwards browsing (with the Left-Arrow key) when switching between different input modes (Text Input, Send To).
• Instant Calculate (sending an arithmetic expression to LaunchBar via Send To) now ignores currency symbols in the sent expression.
• Applying file path(s) via ⌘V (Paste) or ⌘D (Drop Finder Selection) to a selected item now behaves the same as when these path(s) are sent to that item via Send To, i.e. a list of available file operations is shown (instead of the former pop-up menu).
• Improved dragging of files onto LaunchBar. Dragging to right end of the bar selects the dragged file in LaunchBar. Dragging to the left side of the bar applies the dragged file to the selected item.
• Improved “Duplicate” action.

Other Changes

• Removed “Show text input title” option from preferences.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: After running an AppleScript “LaunchBar AppleScript Runner” would sometimes not terminate properly and instead run indefinitely.
• Fixed: Missing color of Finder Tags when running on OS X 10.11.
• Fixed: When dragging the LaunchBar window, snap to center / snap to default position didn’t work on external displays.
• Fixed an issue causing 1Password bookmarks indexing to fail.
• iTunes indexing now ignores iOS apps, iPad apps and iBooks.
• Fixed: Instant Send of whitespace string no longer triggers Calculator.
• Fixed wrong Merriam Webster Search Template URLs in factory configuration.
• Fixed an issue causing rules that were configured to not search subfolders to be never re-indexed.

Support for OS X El Capitan

• Added two new El Capitan themes that use of the new system font.
• Recent document indexing is finally reliable again, but only when running on OS X El Capitan.

Other Improvements

• Added diversity options for emojis. Also, the Emoji rule now lets you choose your preferred skin tone color. Requires OS X 10.10.3 or newer.
• LaunchBar window now snaps to vertical and horizontal positions when dragged.
• LaunchBar window now works better with hidden menu bars.
• iTunes tracks: Computed ratings are no longer displayed.
• LaunchBar Actions: Added support for template images in result items independent from the image’s name (iconIsTemplate).
• Applications indexing rule is now a valid Send-to target.
• Updated Google icon in search action.

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug causing LaunchBar’s window to stay on screen after finishing text input with suggestions.
• Fixed bug causing texts to be truncated on OS X 10.9.
• Lots of other bugfixes.

• Minor improvements to LaunchBar Action Editor.
• Added support for searching in Dash 3.
• Extended list of currency symbols that are ignored in calculator expressions.
• Google suggestions now use HTTPS.
• Fixed: LaunchBar crashed when opening some files or folders in iCloud Drive.
• Fixed: The actions indexing rule was continuously re-indexed because the OS X Action Extensions seemed to have changed (this resulted in high CPU usage by LaunchBar and “pkd”).
• Fixed: LaunchBar did not find Emojis with a long name when typing only a short abbreviation.
• Fixed: Opening a location in Maps launched Safari as a side effect if the “Open URLs in current Safari window or tab” option was enabled
• Fixed: After Send-to, some operations acted on the previous target item instead of on the visible item.
• Fixed: Wrong number of visible items being shown when typing an abbreviation after Instant Send.

New Features

• LaunchBar now includes a new Action Editor, making it easier than ever to create incredible actions. Start developing with script templates, configure your action’s runtime behavior, manage localizations and more. Find a detailed feature list below.
• “New Folder with Selection” action for multiple selections. The action can be triggered via Shortcut (Control-Command-N) and it’s also accessible via Send-To.
• Shared Snippets: You can now select one or more additional snippets folders. Especially useful when synced via cloud services to share certain snippets with other computers, co-workers or friends. Works with any kind of syncing service such as iCloud, Dropbox, SparkleShare, OmniPresence, BitTorrent Sync, etc.

Improvements

• Currency symbols are ignored during calculations.
• Instant Calculate: Sending a single number to Calculator now selects the entire number, which makes it easier to apply functions like sin(), sqrt(), etc.
• Improved detection of plain text files.
• Info Browsing can now also be triggered with Shift-Right if there are currently no staged items.
• iCloud documents are now opened with the default application.
• Improved list of an application’s recent documents.

Bugfixes

• Fixed unreliable music playback with iTunes 12 when shuffle mode is active.
• Fixed an issue causing “Search Dash” action to crash on OS X Mavericks.

Action Editor

The Action Editor is included in LaunchBar 6.4 and can be easily opened via shortcut (Option-Command-E), abbreviation search or LaunchBar menu.

Get an overview of all your installed actions

• Several filter options: Built-in Actions, Custom Actions, My Actions, Recently Modified
• Search for actions with certain properties.
• Share actions via E-Mail, Messages, AirDrop

Create new or modify existing actions

• Easily create new actions from scratch or duplicate existing actions for customization.
• Configure action properties, runtime behavior, and more. Values are pre-filled where possible.
• Configure and modify action scripts with various scripting languages.
  • Script templates provided for AppleScript, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Shell script and Swift.
  • Easily add or remove Suggestions Scripts and Action URL scripts.
  • Configure script properties.
  • Open scripts in default editor for editing.
• Manage action resources
  • Add, rename or delete resources.
  • Set image as action icon.
• Manage localization
  • Add or remove localizations.
  • Manage localizable strings.

Other Features

• Drag & Drop support for scripts, resources, action icon and more.
• Easily open existing actions in Action Editor
  • From LaunchBar's indexing window.
  • By sending the action via Send-To.
  • By double-clicking already installed actions in Finder.
• Preferences to configure reused information like preferred script type, own bundle identifier prefix, contact information.

Improved Tags support

We’ve improved our support for Finder tags, allowing you to better work with multiple tags. You can search for files that have multiple tags set, and you can apply multiple tags (add, remove or replace them) in one go. To select multiple tags, you can use LaunchBar’s staging feature.

• Sending one or more files to the Add/Remove/Replace Tags actions presents a list of all available tags (as it did before), but you can now select multiple tags from that list.
• Items can now be sent to multiple tags to add, remove or replace all existing tags in one go.
• When multiple tags are selected in LaunchBar, pressing Return now presents a list of items that have all these tags set. To search for these multi-tagged items in Finder instead, you can press Command-Return.
• The tags of an item, that are shown during Info Browsing (by pressing Option-Right) can now be removed conveniently just by pressing Command-Delete. This also works for multiple tags.
• Fixed some tag indexing issues: Items with multiple tags or with legacy color labels were not properly indexed under some circumstances.

Multiple Selection Dragging

Well, we announced this feature already in our 6.2 release notes. But due to an embarrassing mistake in our build process, the feature was not enabled in the released version. But now it finally works and you can drag multiple items from LaunchBar to other applications!

Other Improvements

• Added “Detect Search Templates” bookmarks indexing option. This restores the previous behavior of the bookmarks indexer to automatically detect search templates (URLs containing an asterisk) in your web browser’s bookmarks. If you rather want these URLs to be indexed as regular bookmarks, you can turn off this option.
• Added “Instant Calculate” option to Calculator preferences. When you Instant-Send an arithmetic expression to LaunchBar, it automatically calculates and shows the result. When you send a plain number, it’s automatically opened in LaunchBar’s calculator. With this new option you can turn off this behavior, if you prefer to just send the text without any calculator magic.
• The dict.cc action now performs its queries via https.
• Fixed: The “Move to Trash” action didn’t work for multiple items in conjunction with Path Finder.
• Improved display of action result items.

New Features and Improvements

• Staging: Multiple items in the result list can now also be selected by dragging with the mouse.
• Multiple selections (i.e. staged items) can now be dragged from LaunchBar to other applications.
• Added support for Fantastical 2.
• Improved iCloud Documents / iCloud Drive indexing.
• Improved appearance of large type window on OS X Yosemite.
• User account items now show the user’s account image.
• Added support for showing multiple paths in Large Type.
• Improved “Search Dash” action and added support for Dash Beta.
• Improved background execution of AppleScripts.
• Improved Info Browsing of contact details (phone numbers, email addresses, social profiles, etc.).
• Improved subtitle display of contact details that have been selected via full index search.
• The “Display in Large Type” action now also works for file paths.
• Software Update checks are now performed via https.

Calculator

• Improved Instant Calculate to better distinguish between phone numbers and arithmetic expressions.
• Improved Instant Calculate for multiple lines of selected text.
• Sending a plain number via Instant Send to LaunchBar now opens that number in Calculator.
• Improved automatic insertion of plus operator.
• Improved number detection.

Configuration Interface

• Improved information on invalid rules in index window.
• The index window now shows the full path of Custom Lists items, and their path is now editable.

LaunchBar Actions

• If two actions have the same bundle identifier, only the one with the higher version will be included in the index. This is important if you’re an Action Developer: Make sure all your actions have a unique bundle identifier and a valid version in the format “major.minor.bugfix”, e.g. “1.4.12”.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: Pasting clipboard items into Safari form fields sometimes didn’t work.
• Fixed an issue causing the Clipboard History to stop working.
• Fixed: When deleting iCloud documents, Finder did not become active reliably to show its confirmation dialog.
• Fixed: Developer Resources indexing.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when using the current WebKit nightly.

• Fixed a crash when using the Wikipedia search action.
• Fixed an issue where rounded corners were not updated in some themes.
• Fixed an issue when adding OmniWeb or Opera bookmarks rule to the index.
• Web bookmarks indexing no longer creates search templates for URLs containing an asterisk.

• Added support for third party sharing services (accessible via Actions indexing rule).
• Automatic formatting of displayed phone numbers (same format as in Contacts.app).
• Fixed an incompatibility with 1Password 5.
• Fixed an issue when indexing the latest Developer Documentation.
• Fixed some issues when hovering the action menu button with the mouse on OS X Yosemite.
• Fixed an issue causing LaunchBar to sometimes become visible when a volume got mounted or unmounted.
• Fixed: Automatic index updates sometimes didn’t work reliably for some indexing rules (Safari History, Chrome History, Firefox Bookmarks and History, Contacts/Previous Recipients).
• Improved actions indexing to follow symbolic links.
• Command-A no longer creates a multiple selection when the item list ist closed.

• Wikipedia Search now shows more detailed suggestions while typing the search term.
• Fixes a bug that caused certain applications not to appear in the index.
• Improves left/right navigation during auto-activation (for example, while browsing running applications with Command-Space,Space).

Improvements & Bug Fixes

• List navigation with vi/Emacs shortcuts (Control-N, Control-P, Control-I, Control-J, Control-K) now also works during text input.
• To prevent conflicts with Emacs shortcuts, the “vi” arrow keys (Control-H/J/K/L) can now be turned off completely in LaunchBar Preferences > Shortcuts.
• Fixed: Browsing with Control-L didn’t work.
• Info Browsing by pressing and holding the right arrow key is now turned off by default. It can be turned on via LaunchBar Preferences > Shortcuts > Instant Info Browsing.
• Improved application indexing to better exclude certain irrelevant apps inside the Xcode.app file package.
• Improved Calculator history browsing (select LaunchBar’s Calculator, then press right arrow). Opening a history item with ↩ opens the result in Calculator (same as before). But opening the item with Space now opens the expression instead.
• LaunchBar no longer appears on screen when it’s opened automatically at login.
• Fixed an issue causing LaunchBar to appear when unlocking the screen after wake from sleep.
• Fixed indexing of previous email recipients.
• Fixed: ⌘W for closing the LaunchBar window didn’t work during text input.

LaunchBar Actions

• Actions implemented as workflows can now return files.
• Action result items now open their URL or path if no action was set.
• An action’s result items can now optionally specify a “label” and/or a “badge” which will be displayed at the right side of the result list.
• Quick Look can now be triggered with ⌘Y during text input. Useful for previewing the results of some custom actions.
• The new “alwaysShowsSubtitle” attribute can be used to enforce the display of subtitles, even if the “Show all subtitles” option is turned off in LaunchBar Preferences > Appearance.

General

• Info Browsing can now be triggered by pressing and holding the right arrow key. This allows triggering Info Browsing without an additional modifier key.
• New Yosemite Dark theme.
• Improve Yosemite theme.
• Additional OS X Yosemite related UI improvements.
• New “Call with iPhone” action for OS X Yosemite (requires an iPhone running iOS 8).
• LaunchBar now properly supports pasting into TextExpander fill-in windows.
• Improved actions for ejecting volumes:
  • New “Eject” action to eject volumes via Send To
  • Improved “Eject All Ejectable Volumes” action
  • Both actions are browsable, allowing to choose the volume(s) to be ejected.
• Improved opening of multiple disk images.
• Improved Info Browsing of file paths.
• The Calculator history is now also accessible by browsing the Calculator action.
• Improved date parsing for entering Calendar and Reminder events.
• Improved “Move to Trash” behavior (including new confirmation alerts when attempting to trash many items or items from different folders).
• Improved display of Tower repositories.
• Improved display of Cyberduck bookmark files (and removed support for Cyberduck versions prior 3.8).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: Unreliable Instant Open behavior on OS X Yosemite.
• Fixed: Usage counters were not properly incremented for Tower repositories and Development Resources.

LaunchBar Actions

• Added LaunchBar.executeAppleScriptFile() JavaScript function.
• Improved handling of executable path in LaunchBar.execute()

General

• Staging Area for creating multiple selections (see below for details).
• Changed keyboard shortcuts for Info Browsing from ⇧→ to ⌥→ and “Show Siblings” from ⇧← to ⌥←. These changes became necessary to allow a more consistent set of shortcut used for staging.
• Added support for Tower 2 repository bookmark indexing and browsing.
• Improved “Compress (ZIP Archive)” action to support multiple selections.
• Improved “Move to Trash” action with undo support.
• Improved “Sort Lines” actions to preserve the string’s trailing newline.
• Improved calculator to properly handle large numbers up to 1,189731495e+4932.
• Improved "New Folder" action to suggest a different folder name if an "untitled folder" already exists.
• Improved Info Browsing to show download date if available.
• Improved “Duplicate” action (⇧⌘D) to also trigger “Rename” so you can immediately apply a reasonable name to the duplicate.
• Improved accessibility support.

Staging Area

• Concept of multiple selections in LaunchBar. To learn more about this new feature, read our blog post.
• Shortcuts to create multiple selections:
  • ⇧↑ or ⇧↓ stages/unstages a range of items.
  • ⌘↑ or ⌘↓ toggles staging of the selected item.
  • Comma stages the selected item.
  • ⌘-Click toggles staging of the clicked item.
  • ⇧-Click stages/unstages a range of items.
  • ⌘-A stages all items in current list.
  • ⌫ unstages the selected item.
  • Escape or ⇧⌫ clears the entire staging area.
• Acting on multiple selections
  • Open multiple items with ↩ (apps, files & folders, contacts & email addresses, bookmarks, emoji, snippets, songs, albums, …).
  • Press ⇥ to invoke Send To:
    • Open files with a particular application
    • Send files to a contact as email attachments
    • Move or copy files to a folder
    • Compress (ZIP Archive)
  • Use actions on multiple selections, for instance:
    • Move to Trash (⌘⌫)
    • Duplicate (⇧⌘D)
    • Eject (⌘E)
    • Copy (⌘C)
    • Get Info (⌘I)
    • Show in Finder (⌘↩)
• Inspecting and reviewing staged items
  • ⇧→ shows all currently staged items.
  • ⌫ unstages the selected item and removes it from the list.
  • While the list is displayed, the items can be rearranged with ⌥↑ or ⌥↓. Useful if the order is relevant (contacts, songs, attachments, …).
• Fetching staged items
  • ⇧← turns all selected items into a single “multiple selection” item (rarely necessary, though).
  • Necessary when opening multiple files from different folders (this is a safety measure, to prevent accidental opening of such a scattered selection).

Calendars & Reminders

• Calendar input is now more flexible and accepts description, location and date/time in arbitrary order (only the location must always be after the description):
  • <description> @ <date/time>
  • <date/time> @ <description>
  • <description> @ <location> @ <date/time>
  • <description> @ <date/time> @ <location>
  • <date/time> @ <description> @ <location>
• Date & Time can now also be specified relative to “now”, for example: “Call Susan @ 20min” to create a reminder that’s due in 20 minutes.

Contacts

• Birthday browsing: Showing contacts born on the same day or in the same year.
• Contact labels are permanently visible while browsing.
• Dedicated icons for social media profiles.

LaunchBar Actions

• URL-Scheme support for LaunchBar Actions. Actions can now optionally define a script that is called when a URL like x-launchbar:action/com.example.action is opened anywhere in OS X. See the Script Types for more details.
• Added support for LaunchBar Actions implemented as Automator Workflows.
• Added “Play Sound Effect” Automator action and AppleScript command.
• When an action returns a single item, Instant Send is turned on by default.
• Added an option that indicates when a script is run for the purpose of generating live feedback (LB_OPTION_LIVE_FEEDBACK).
• Added new JavaScript methods:
  • Added support for working with Base64 data and binary data. See Working with Binary Data for more information.
  • Added support for loading HTTP requests with arbitrary HTTP methods. Also added a convenience method for POST requests.
  • Added File.fileURLForPath() and File.pathForFileURL().
  • Added methods for opening and closing LaunchBar’s QuickLook window for any URL.
  • Added LaunchBar.systemVersion.
• Fixed: LaunchBar Actions implemented in AppleScript caused launch of applications during indexing. Also, these actions now must specifically declare in their Info.plist the fact that they accept or require arguments (previously, implementing the appropriate handler in the script was sufficient).
• Fixed: Action result items that only have a path or URL set didn’t appear in LaunchBar.
• Fixed: If LBResultType was set to path and that path contained the tilde character (˜), it was not expanded for the resulting items.
• Updated Developer Documentation to reflect changes and provide information on how to use the new features.

Other improvements and bug fixes

• x-launchbar URLs can now optionally contain a double forward slash after the scheme.
• Fixed an issue with “Open Location” where the TLD was not removed when entering a dot.
• Fixed ClipMerge behavior in iTerm 2 when its “Copy Selection” preference is enabled.
• Minor bug fixes and improvements.

New Features

• The “Enter Color” action now supports rebeccapurple (in honor of Rebecca Meyer).
• Added support for Safari History indexing on OS X Yosemite.
• Added “Encode to Base64” and “Decode as Base64” string transformation actions.
• ⌥-Escape can now be used to end sub-search without closing the item list.
• The Small theme is now attached to the menu bar by default. Of course, you can still move it to wherever you like it to be.

Improvements

• Additional mixed case conversion suggestions are now shown during Enter/Edit Text (scroll down the suggestion list to see them all).
• Improved uppercase/lowercase case conversion titles.
• Browsing the ~/Downloads folder now automatically sorts by Date Added.
• Reduced indexing frequency of some folder rules by ignoring changes in ~/Library unless the rule explicitly has its path set to a folder inside ~/Library.
• Minor wording and localization improvements.

Fixes

• Fixed: The default “Desktop” indexing rule didn’t index any subfolders.
• Fixed: “Sort Lines Descending” did sort ascending instead of descending.
• Fixed: ⇧↩ to paste in frontmost app didn’t work for browseable info items.
• Fixed: Play in Random Order didn’t work for albums.

LaunchBar Actions

• Improved JavaScript’s LaunchBar.execute() to accept an array of arguments.
• Added option for script action result items with an “action” set to specify whether their action should run in background (“actionRunsInBackground”).
• Fixed: Actions didn’t receive modifier flags while browsing with arrow keys.

General

• Added beautiful new icons to many built-in actions.
• New Prepend Text action (⇧⌘P).
• New built-in text transformation actions:
  • Case Conversions (UPPERCASE, lowercase, Titlecase, CamelCase, dromedaryCase, spinal-case, Train-Case, snake_case, SNAKE_CASE)
  • Calculate SHA1 Checksum
  • Calculate MD5 Checksum
  • Expand Tilde in Path
  • Abbreviate With Tilde in Path
  • Remove Percent Encoding
  • Add Percent Encoding
  • Remove Multiple Spaces
  • Sort Lines Ascending
  • Sort Lines Descending
• Improved plain text file content search (⌘F) to show live results.
• Added shortcut (⇧⌘→) to sort folder contents by Date Added.
• Added bookmarks indexing option allowing to index bookmarks from Safari’s Favorites Bar only.
• Extended Clipboard History capacity (up to 100 items or for a certain amount of days).
• Rearranged “New Indexing Rule” menu to reflect the structure of the sidebar
• Improved Theme switching: Default width will be applied only if different from the currently active theme.
• Added missing localizations.
• “Run Terminal Command” action only opens a second Terminal window if necessary.
• Fixed issue causing last calculator result variable "a" to be not updated.
• Fixed issue causing Append Text not to work via Send To (when sending text to a file).
• Fixed issue causing welcome window not to appear in front.
• Fixed issue causing iOS Simulator not to appear in LaunchBar’s index.
• Various other bug fixes and stability improvements.

LaunchBar JavaScript Actions

• Added LaunchBar.homeDirectory property for JavaScript actions.
• Added support for parsing plist content stored as JavaScript String – Plist.parse()
• Fixed issue causing JavaScript actions not being able to return plain text.

Brand-new User Interface with Themes

• Larger default interface
• Several built-in alternative themes
• Theme switching via abbreviation search
• Plenty of new, beautifully designed icons
• New app icon

Improved Configuration Interface

• Streamlined configuration UI
• Rules in the sidebar are now organized in groups.
• Configuration changes are now saved automatically.
• Index updates now happen fully automatically. The Schedule pane for configuring index updates is therefore no longer necessary.
• Deleting/adding rules is now the recommended way to select the desired set of features. Disabling of indexing rules is still possible, but only via contextual menu (no more checkboxes).

Additional Indexing Rules

• Reminder Lists
• Emoji
• Finder Tags
• Safari iCloud Tabs
• Safari Top Sites
• Safari Reading List
• LaunchBar Themes
• Transmit Bookmarks

Additional Built-in Actions

• Add/Remove/Replace Finder Tag
• Remove All Finder Tags
• Clear Text Input History
• Current Safari Page
• Enter Color
• Open AirDrop Window
• Send via AirDrop
• Send LaunchBar Feedback

Powerful custom, script-based actions

• Extend LaunchBar’s feature set with custom actions written in your favorite scripting language (JavaScript, AppleScript, Python, Ruby, Shell Script, PHP, …)
• Custom actions can return arbitrary result items or suggestions that are displayed immediately, while entering text.
• Embedded resources like icons, helper scripts, audio files, binaries, …
• Optional execution in background.
• Simple double click installation of third-party actions.
• Optionally only allow execution of actions that have a valid code signature.

Text Input Live Results

• Calendar & Reminder input live feedback.
• Calculator live results and history of previous calculations.
• “Open Location” provides suggestions while entering URLs.

Live Web Searches

• Google
• Wikipedia
• DuckDuckGo
• dict.cc
• Support for custom live web searches via LaunchBar Actions.

Info Browsing

• Press Shift-Right Arrow to access information about a selected item like:
• Image Properties (dimensions, color profile, …)
• File Size
• Modification Date, Creation Date
• Finder Tags
• Disk Capacity & Usage
• Plain text file contents
• XML/plist file contents
• An application’s user defaults
• and more, …
• Info Browsing can also be triggered with ⌃⌥⌘-Right Arrow
• For many items it can also be triggered just by pressing Right Arrow.

Usage Statistics

• Statistics about:
• Superpower Usage
• Saved Time
• LaunchBar Invocations
• Accessible via ⌥⌘U shortcut or action menu.

Other Features

• Fully automatic index updates.
• Improved Send To target item suggestions (e.g. File Operations, Tag Actions, …)
• Improved presentation of contact cards, including contact images.
• Support for FaceTime Audio as caller script.
• Support for AirMail as default email client.
• Sending text to an item accepting text input (e.g. search actions) and pressing the space key opens text input to allow editing the search term.
• Improved Recent Documents browsing. Now includes all documents that can be opened with the selected application, sorted by access date. This allows you to access recently used documents even for apps that do not support the standard Cocoa API (like Adobe applications).
• Subtitle display is now turned off by default. Subtitles can be shown temporarily by holding down the ⌃⌥⌘ modifier keys.
• Back-tab (⇧⇥) during Send To now selects the previous item in the list (⇥ selects the next one).
• LaunchBar 6 requires OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Removed and Replaced Features

• The index window’s Schedule pane has been removed because it’s no longer needed. All index updates are now performed automatically.
• Removed .clip.rtf / .clip.txt support. The same functionality can be accomplished with the Snippets indexing rule.
• Replaced color label actions with corresponding actions for Finder tags.
• Removed support for legacy contacts applications (Entourage, Eudora, …)
• Removed support for legacy web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Camino, Shiira)
• Removed search templates that were replaced by live search actions.