When an application is highlighted in LiteSwitch’s onscreen display, you can use keyboard commands to quickly switch to it, hide it, quit it, force quit it, or switch to it and hide all other apps. You can perform more actions on the selected application.(Tiger’s built-in switcher has added Command-` support.) With LiteSwitch X, you use the much easier Command-Shift or Command-`. If you’re running Panther or earlier and want to cycle through applications in reverse order using the built-in switcher, you have to use the somewhat awkward keyboard combination Command-Shift-Tab. With the built-in switcher, it’s Command-Tab or nothing. Shortcut, but you get a wide enough variety of choices that you’re likely to find one you like: Command-Tab, Option-Tab, Control-Tab, Command-Return, Option-Return, or Control-Return. LiteSwitch lets you choose your preferred keyboard shortcut.(Tiger’s built-in switcher has improved significantly in this respect compared to earlier versions of the OS, so if you’re using Tiger, this benefit won’t be as big of a deal to you.) Since you’re more likely to want to switch to an app you used recently than one you haven’t used in a couple hours, this makes for a better switcher, in my opinion. What’s “properly”? The current app shows up first in the list, then the most recently used app, and so on. LiteSwitch sorts applications properly.Gems, but also to explain why I think they’re so cool, here are the reasons I find LiteSwitch X to be an indispensable utility: Since my job as Macworld’s resident Gemologist is not only to (In fairness to LiteSwitch X’s poll numbers, Mac OS X Hints readers tend to be early adopters-I’m sure that more than a few LiteSwitch X fans with Intel Macs were likely using other methods at the time of the poll simply because LiteSwitch X wasn’t yet compatible.)
Clearly, there’s a lot of “Why would I need that?” going around. That showed that of the nearly 1300 respondents who claimed to use some method of keyboard switching-OS X’s built-in Command-Tab switcher, LiteSwitch X, Keyboard Maestro, or Witch-as the method they most often use to switch between applications, only 3 percent (39 respondents) use LiteSwitch X. That inspired me to finally sit down and say, “Here’s why.” That and a
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