Pieoneer Has Changed the Way I Interact With Apps on My Mac
There are many easy ways to run applications on your Mac. You can click the icon in the Dock , use Spotlight search (or better alternatives) , or visit the Applications folder and launch your favorite apps. None of these methods are as fast or fun as launching apps using Pioneer , a launcher that lets you add your favorite apps to a radial menu. It also has two other useful features – a built-in app switcher and an easy way to reveal hidden features of your favorite apps.
Using Pioneer as an application launcher
This is the easiest part of using Pioneer. Once you install an app, you can click its icon in the menu bar and go to Settings > Launcher . Here you can record a keyboard shortcut to activate Pioneer, and add, reorder, and remove apps from the launcher. Pioneer doesn’t seem to limit the number of apps you can add to the radial launcher, but perhaps it should. It’s great for holding up to 10 apps, but after that it starts to feel cramped. As an experiment, I added all the applications that I regularly launch. With 21 apps on the launcher, Pioneer began to resemble a pizza with too many toppings.
Luckily, sanity prevailed and I deleted apps that I don’t need to run all the time. Once setup is complete, Pioneer gets the job done quickly and reliably. Press the keyboard shortcut to open the radial menu and use your mouse cursor to click on the application you want to launch. I found myself wanting to use Pioneer without a mouse, but that’s not possible at the moment. It would be quite awkward to try and use the arrow keys to navigate the radial menu anyway, so I agree with the developer’s design decision.
Setting up the app switcher
You can also use Pioneer as a faster way to switch between running applications. To try this, find the Switch tab in the settings menu, then set a keyboard shortcut for this action. Once you do this, you can launch it to see all your open apps in one radial menu. Use your mouse cursor to quickly select an application and it will immediately appear in the foreground. I find this to be faster than using Command-Tab to switch between running applications on my MacBook.
Hidden Gem: The Controller
I think Pioneer’s best feature is the Controller, which makes it easy to access functions hidden under layers of menus in various apps. To use this, you need to grant accessibility permissions to this application on your Mac. Pioneer is on the Mac App Store, which means it’s under additional control by Apple, so you don’t have to worry about granting those permissions. Go to the app settings, select the Controller tab and click the button to grant accessibility permissions, which will open the system settings. Once you approve the application, restart Pioneer to use this feature.
You should first set up a keyboard shortcut for the controller and then start adding the apps you want to use it with. After adding multiple apps, you need to manually add shortcuts for each app. I took the opportunity to add my favorite keyboard shortcuts to Ulysses, my default writing app. From now on, I use the controller to quickly launch these shortcuts to view word counts, export text, check outline, etc. It’s a little tedious to manually set this up for each app, but it’s a one-time issue that Pioneer makes it a lot easier.
Best overall experience
Pioneer has improved my experience of launching and switching between apps, and the controller feature is the icing on the cake. The best part is the app’s user interface. I also like the attention to detail. Every animation looks smooth, toggles in settings can be clicked or dragged, and the app also lets you turn on sounds. As you scroll through the radial menu, each item selection makes a sweet sound, and you can switch it to a more playful option that sounds like “do-re-mi-fa-so.”
My only complaint about this app is that it sometimes automatically opens the settings window on my Mac. With the exception of this minor error, Pioneer delivered on everything it promised and did it quite well. Although I was able to purchase the app for $5, since I started using it, the price seems to have jumped to $10. However, the app is still useful if you like the idea of using radial menus to launch or switch between apps.