Couple of other tricks with LiteSwitch (been using it for years):

•• Hit Command-Tab, and then use your scroll wheel to speed backwards and forwards through the list.

•• While scrolling, stop on one, hit Command-Q with your other hand, and it puts a large X through that app. Click once more with the scroll to the next app, and quit that one. You’ll find you can quit opens apps extremely fast with this method. Oh, and if you change your mind about quitting an app, just hit Command-Q again and the X goes away. No app actually quits until you release the Command key.

•• “Don’t Display in LiteSwitch.” Oh, this one is so cool. You probably have a bunch of apps that work in the background (QuicKeys, SpamSieve, Spell Catcher, etc) that you don’t ever really need to access, especially via LiteSwitch. No problem: hit Command-Tab to bring up the list, continue holding the Command key, scroll to the one you want to disappear, and then right-click to get the drop-down menu. Select the option “Don’t display in LiteSwitch.” Damn.

Glad you highlighted these Proteron guys, Merlin. They were pretty blue when Tiger came out and Apple had clearly ripped off their idea. Folks need to know that LiteSwitch is a superior Command-Tab app switcher to Apple’s default one. I hope that Proteron continues to develop LiteSwitch well into Leopard.

Just a minor note: built-in app switching in Mac OS X already allows quitting and hiding of apps (though not the other options listed). Press Q or H while the app switcher is visible, and the selected app quits or is hidden.

I’ve been raving out LiteSwitch X for years without seeing much other praise for it. It’s nice to see someone else who appreciates it as much as I do. Also worth mentioning: LiteSwitch X is also better designed from an interaction perspective as well because it allows you to close multiple apps by “X-ing” them - and not continuously bumping them over like the current switcher does. This bumping forces your eyes to readjust every time an app is closed. Apple should have figured this out a long time ago.

I use Witch (http://www.manytricks.com/witch/) by Peter Maurer. It shows individual windows as well which you can close by hitting Apple-W. This is great for switching between Word Documents or Safari Windows. Of course it also has right-click (control-click) capabilities, and it is 100% FREE.

@Mike H - You’re totally right — I should have highlighted more of the extra functionality, like “CMD-F-R” to force relaunch, etc.

@Joshua: I’d never noticed that, but it does sound like an improvement.

@Nik: Witch is awesome and I can also highly recommend it (I love Peter’s stuff in general). I found Witch a bit much for my own needs, but I can see how it could easily become essential once you have your head around that extra functionality.

Just a question, is that link for LiteStep in the first sentences supposed to take you back to this article?

Sorry LiteSwitch not LiteStep.

Does anyone else find it annoying that Apple+W in LiteSwitch does not do what Apple+W does in the normal switcher?

That is, usually I can roll over a window and Apple+W it to close the window. However, LiteSwitch has for some reason changed that functionality. Now Apple+W is an alias for Apple+H. Apple+H always hid/unhid the application. It’s unfortunate that Apple+W now does the same. :(

Hm. I swore Apple’s switcher supported Apple+W. I must have been confusing it with Witch, which does support Apple+W.

Seems like Witch takes the cake.

On top of that, if you want to use Witch with Apple+Tab, PullTab claims to be able to disable OS X’s Apple+Tab so that you can assign it to Witch. That’s cool.

I’ve been using liteswitch for a couple of hours now and must say I’m loving the extra functionality, however there is one ‘little’ thing thats a huge drawback in my opinion and thats the custom icon badges that can display various app info like the number of unread IM’s in adium, current download speed in Transmission…etc.

If there’s a fix or some other bit of hax to get around this issue I’d love to know as this is probably goin to be a deal breaker for me

And don’t forget, unlike the built-in app switcher, LiteSwitch sorts the icons of the displayed apps by the order they’ve been used, with the most recent apps sorted to the left.

So, if you’re switching back and forth between two apps, it only takes two presses of the tab key with the command key down to switch between them. Whereas the built-in app switcher can take up to n+1 tab-key presses, where n is the number of applications running.

Sorry, that’s meant to be “with the most recently used apps sorted to the left”

I must admit that as much as this LiteSwitch has some nice features- for me, this would be a slight waste of both system resources and money.

To quote a friend of mine, “Resources aren´t exactly abundant on your average laptop, so if you are even hesitating to get something that is always on, you probably shouldn´t.”

I find that QuickSilver combined with the Activity Monitor or the processes plugin does the job just as good for me. You can mass-launch and mass-quit applications in QuickSilver using the comma trick.

Merlin, i dont mean to nag but what happened to MacBreak Dev it would be soooooooooo cool.