Description

AppLaunch is a "graphical" shell for MacOS X. The program consists of a command line for executing commands and opening files as well as URLs. Simply type the URL, filename or shell command you wish to and press enter: The command will be executed immediately. Although this may cause some security problems, I think I made the right decision, because you have got access to the environment, shell acronyms like ~ for your home directory and much more. But the most important reason for this is that the shell called by AppLaunch does path expansion; that means you can execute your programs as always without specifying their full path.

A new feature introduced in AppLaunch 3 is the possibility of manipulating the processes environment. You can set, change or remove environment variables for the application you want to launch. You can also save these settings to your user defaults and restore the saved ones from a previous session. Please note, that the variables are not set by default, you have got to hit the Set Environment Variables button and press OK to set the values.

AppLaunch 3 also offers the possibility to run shell commands with super-user rights. Simply activate the lock symbel as known from other MacOS X applications, authenticate as admin and then launch your command line utility.

For launching X applications there is now a button on the main window. By clicking this button, AppLaunch starts your local X server, this is /Applications/Utilities/X11.app. There is also the environment variable DISPLAY set, so that launched commands will find the X server. Sadly, this variable is currently not available via the environment editor.