How do you prefer to launch Mac apps?

[jeff1 (Jeff Hecht)]

Mostly from the Dock; I have 38 items across the bottom of a 27-inch screen, and rarely fiddle with them. Several of them launch on Startup. One advantage of the dock is that I can drag documents to apps I use fairly regularly, e.g., Graphic Converter.
Next is Recent Items
After that I dig down to find the Applications Folder

[Shamino (David C.)]

I use the launchpad. On my laptop, I open it with the four-finger-pinch trackpad gesture. On my desktop Mac, I mapped the F19 keyboard key to open/close it.

We had a poll and discussion about Launchpad last year:

Do You Use It? Launchpad on the Mac

In OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple introduced Launchpad, which provides a grid-based app launcher similar to that provided on the iPhone and iPad. To what extent has it become part of your Mac experience? Please vote in the poll below. poll

[jaxon]

Whatever’s easiest and top-of-mind: Via a Finder Document, but also Spotlight, Alfred, Terminal/zsh scripts), the Dock, occasionally Recent Items, Default Folder X…

[SlowButEffective (Richard Tench)]

Keyboard Maestro keyboard shortcuts (F4, F5, etc.) for commonly used apps, then command-space if it’s not in the Dock (or I don’t know where it is in the Dock).

[gotow (Jon Gotow)]

Hi Jeff! If you’ve got any suggestions for Default Folder X’s Quick Search feature when you try it, give me a shout

[gotow (Jon Gotow)]

Bill, give the new Quick Search feature in Default Folder X 6 a try. For me, it’s pretty much replaced LaunchBar. Note that if you select “Applications” as the search filter in Quick Search, it will find any app in the standard Applications folders, rather than just recently-used apps.

[billstanford9 (Bill Stanford)]

Dear Jon, will do!

And this is a chance to say once again a heartfelt “thank you” for Default Folder – I’m certain that a walk around any laboratory at Apple itself would find DF on every computer!

It’s not only that Default Folder has saved five years of my life (and it has): it’s its sheer elegance that makes it such a treasure.

From all of us here: Thank you!

[Matt_McCaffrey]

I use the Dock nearly 99 percent of the time, or of course directly clicking on a document will open its application. Sometimes I right click on a document and choose the application that will open it.

I also have a set of folders at the end of the Dock. In the actual folders I have aliases to specific applications, so when I click the “folder” in the dock I can see a group of applications (like, all my Final Cut Pro applications, or a group I call “Tiny Helpfuls” that includes stuff like a QR Code generator).

[bva (Bruce Van Allen)]

Same here - on my main machine’s large monitor the Dock is where I go first to launch apps if not clicking a file directly. Here’s a handy trick for making the Dock more user-friendly:
In the Terminal or equivalent, type these commands (ok all on one line):
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'; killall Dock
A blank space will appear in the Dock, which you can then drag to a location to separate categories of apps. My Dock has nine sections of apps divided this way, 59 apps total.
I also use Alfred (hit option twice), and shift-command-A if in the Finder to open the Applications folder.

[mon.monque (Michael Porter)]

I have a handful of frequently used apps that I launch using HotKey and the hyperkey combination shift-ctrl-opt-cmd, assigned to my caps lock key (something I wish the OS would do, but there are a few utilities out there that help–currently using Hyperkey).

e.g. I open Mail with hyperkey+M, my Mastodon client with hyperkey+N (since M was taken ), Safari with hyperkey+S, and so on.

After that, LaunchBar and the Dock.