Hey, Product Hunt!
I created Apptivate back in 2010 when I needed a small and simple app for launching applications and running scripts using hotkeys. There were other similar applications at the time, but either they only launched applications or they were too bloated, so I decided to write my own app.
The development on Apptivate has stagnated since I don't have as much free-time as I used to (and since there are no critical issues), but I do make some progress on the entirely rewritten Apptivate 3.0 now and then. Since I use Apptivate every day myself, I'm quite motivated to keep the app alive.
If you have any questions about Apptivate, let me know here or on Twitter (@boerworz or @apptivateapp)!
Cheers,
Tim
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@boerworz@apptivateapp Is there a way to change the menu icon to not have a blue background? It's very distracting like that. Otherwise awesome app
@mikeyahdoot I do have plans to fix it, but I can't say when it will be done. I need to update the code base (which has gone untouched for ~3 years) to not use GC and other deprecated technologies before I can fix this seemingly simple-to-fix issue.
@estebanrules With Apptivate, I've tried to follow the "do one thing and do it well" philosophy. Apptivate doesn't have as many features as Alfred or Keyboard Maestro, but it makes it very easy to add custom keyboard shortcuts for applications, scripts, and files. It also has two features that I believe are still unique to Apptivate:
* Hotkey Sequences, which let you map a sequence of hotkeys to an item. For example, you could map Safari to Ctrl-A followed by S. If you have a lot of items, this avoids having to use convoluted hotkeys such as Ctrl-Cmd-Shift-3 since you can avoid conflicts by adding another hotkey to the sequence instead.
* Application Quick Peek, which lets you press and hold an application hotkey to activate the application. When you release the hotkey, the application is hidden. This is very useful for quickly viewing e.g. new tweets in your Twitter app.
@joid I see Apptivate as a complement to Spotlight, not a replacement. I use Apptivate to launch (or bring to the foreground) applications that I use many times a day (e.g. Terminal.app, MacVim, Slack, Spotify), and then I use LaunchBar or Spotlight to open the things I don't use often enough to warrant global hotkeys for.
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