Computer speed has always been a problem for all types of users. You never have enough time to waste in front of the computer waiting for applications to start, searching for folders or looking for a specific document. This is why you need to find a solution to speed up your workflow. Developed by the programmers at Altomac, Speedy Mac may be exactly the tool you need to improve your general user experience.

Speedy Mac is an easy to use launcher that you can customize to quickly access your favorite applications, documents and websites. It takes up very little space on your desktop and gives you the possibility to bookmark your important documents. Another great feature included in Speedy Mac is the task launcher; you can add AppleScript files and Automator workflows to the task list from where you can launch them immediately.

The Looks

You can choose one of the two display modes provided by Speedy Mac: a bunny icon in the menu bar or a floating strip that you can place anywhere on your screen. Speedy Mac also allows you to easily switch between the two by dragging the icon or the strip while holding the Command key. The main categories in which the shortcuts are classified are: Documents, Folders, Websites, Applications and Tasks.

The Works

You no longer have to fill your desktop with dozens of icons and shortcuts to quickly access your most important files. Speedy Mac stores links to all your favorite documents, applications, folders and even websites. It also remembers all your recently used files, classifying them into groups according to the application that you used to open them. This way, you will always have the files that you access more often just a click away. If the current files displayed in your 'Recents' list are no longer useful for you or maybe you don't want other people to see them, you can select the 'Clear Recents' option and remove them (from the list).

If the amount of documents that you usually work with is large, you can select the most important entries and add them to your favorites and you won't have to worry about them disappearing from the 'Recents' list.

Opening your favorite websites is as easy as it gets. Just a click on the appropriate entry in Speedy Mac and your default browser will open showing the page you requested. I found a small inconvenience while working with Speedy Mac's website launcher. Although it opens the listed pages with no problems, it only shows the websites open in Safari as recently visited pages. If your default browser is Firefox or maybe Opera, Speedy Mac doesn't grab your recent websites correctly. Still, you can save the links in the 'Favorites' section and launch them with your browser.

Speedy Mac presents the current item that you have opened along with its complete path, which you can easily add to your favorites or set the application to ignore it in the Recents section. Speedy Mac is also able to automate some of your repetitive tasks by using AppleScript files and Automator workflows. You no longer have to look for the scripts and actions you need, just add them to Speedy Mac's task list and run them whenever you want to.

Speedy Mac is fully customizable allowing you to modify its appearance and the lists content. In the General Options tab, Speedy Mac lets you select the preferred display mode, set the application to start automatically when you log in and also choose which of the available menus to display in the main program window. The other tabs of the Options window enable you to add files to your Favorites lists and also specify the programs and documents to ignore in the list of your recently used files.

By enabling the 'Check for updates at startup' option, you can make sure that you always have the most recent version of Speedy Mac with all the features up to date.

The Good

Using Speedy Mac is so easy that even somebody with no computer knowledge can manage it. All you have to do is click on the name of the application or document that you want to open and the program will launch it for you. The best thing about Speedy Mac is that it increases your working speed without any effort on your part.

The Bad

The fact that Speedy Mac only captures the recently visited websites from Safari may be a problem for the users who have other default browsers.

The Truth

Speedy Mac is an easy to use application launcher that also acts as a bookmark manager. The free 30-day trial provided for it should be enough to get you addicted to this incredibly useful application and make you decide to purchase a license for $27.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: