I wanted to create some global keyboard shortcuts for launching apps on MacOS. I used to do this with Quicksilver, but I’ve stopped using that and now just use Spotlight for most of what I used that for. Spotlight, of course, doesn’t have all the features of Quicksilver, including keyboard shortcuts for arbitrary actions. The “Keyboards Shortcuts” pane in System Settings can do a lot, but not specify a specific app to launch. Searching around the web, I found that Automator could be used to add services to it. So a flow to do this for an app would be like:
- open Automator
- create new Quick Action
- add Launch Application task
- select application from dropdown, or drag from finder (need to do so for Finder.app, Terminal.app, some third party apps. Can use finder search to find.)
- save, give name like “Open app-name”
- open Keyboard Shortcuts in System Settings
- select Services, open General in list
- find Automator action name we just created, click “none” to right, enter keyboard shortcut
- click Done button
I set up these shortcuts for frequently used apps:
- Finder:
cmd-opt-ctl-f - MacVim:
cmd-opt-ctl-v - Terminal:
cmd-opt-ctl-space
For some reason, this is a bit slow (like a second), but doesn’t require any third party software. It launches the app if it isn’t and brings it to the foreground, as I wanted. I’m not sure if this works on older MacOS versions, but works in MacOS Sonoma (14) and Sequoia (15).