![]() Should you need to add custom searches, you need to cough up for the paid Pro version – at five dollars, not a bad deal, as long as (a) you need to do a hell of a lot of web research, and (b) you’ve not already got a system of your own using Alfred like me, or bookmarklets, or some script of your own you’ve hacked up, or some other option. The free version has a decent amount to offer, and should do the job for most people. It has built-in browsing smarts to let you post to Twitter and Facebook if you need it to. ![]() I have similar custom searches for Google, Amazon, G Maps, Cult of Mac, and a handful of others. It lets me set up custom searches, so I can search Wikipedia for “cats” by opening Alfred (Command+Space, baby) and typing “w cats”, then Return. I didn’t really see the need for it.īut that’s because I already use Alfred to do very similar jobs. I confess I was rather skeptical about Liquid. If it’s starting to sound a bit like helper apps like LaunchBar or Alfred, that’s because suddenly, with that checkbox checked, it is. Call it up from anywhere, type or paste what you want, and either hit return or use the shortcuts. I’d suggest Liquid is much more useful after you’ve done this. It’s under Options, described as “Use keyboard shortcut when no text is selected.” Tick that box. Liquid can do that – just type in anything and hit return, and it does a Google search by default – but this behavior isn’t enabled. The vast majority of stuff I want to search is stuff that pops up in my head, so isn’t selectable in the first place. That’s certainly helpful in some circumstances, but I find it limiting. On installation, Liquid puts a lot of emphasis on selecting stuff and then acting on it. In most cases, two single letter keypresses will get you to the information you seek, be it a Google search, a Bing search, a map, a Wolfram Alpha calculation, and so on. Those menus have single-letter command shortcuts on them too. You’ll see something like the image above. ![]() So, you might select the phrase “Cult of Mac” from a web page, then hit the Liquid key combo to bring up the app. Liquid works by accepting input from your system clipboard, and acting on it. In Liquid’s case, that means selected and copied text. It turns out that Liquid is a Service – one of those utilities that has system-wide functionality, depending on your working context. The first unexpected surprise was that Liquid wanted me to restart my computer to “complete the installation” – something I’ve never seen before in software downloaded via Apple’s own Mac App Store. ![]()
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