Liquid

 

 

Liquid for macOS makes all your text powerfully interactive. MacUser calls Liquid “Revolutionary” and gives it 5/5 Mice. MacWorld says Liquid is “powerful” and Mashable says it “upgrades your entire macOS system into a seamless work machine.”

 

 

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Compared to Regular Interaction

 

To see how fast Liquid makes you, first consider how you currently perform a basic text task such as looking text up in Wikipedia (or  any online resource). First you select the text you want to work with, then:

 

Standard Interaction:

 

  1. Copy the text
  2. Go to your web browser
  3. Click on the location bar or cmd-l
  4. Type in the URL www.wikipedia.org
  5. Hit enter
  6. Locate the search field on Wikipedia and click
  7. Paste the text
  8. Hit enter

 

The Liquid Way:

 

  1. Keyboard shortcut
  2. Type two characters

 

In detail: Let's say you select the text 'Liquid seriously speeds up your workflow'. You first need to do the keyboard shortcut to summon Liquid (by default ⌘@  but it's easily customizable to ⌘space) and Liquid opens with your text copied across, ready for action:

 

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You can now click on menu categories (such as 'References'), or for more speed use the keyboard shortcuts which are indicated next to the commands: For example next to References you'll see (R) and once 'r' is activated you can do (W) which is the shortcut for Wikipedia, as will be shown to the right of Wikipedia.

 

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“Get used to it & you're hooked”

Stephen Fry actor, writer, national icon

 

 

Why not simply use Spotlight? Spotlight, particularly Spotlight in Yosemite, is very powerful, however Spotlight does not work on selected text and Spotlight guesses what you want to do, which is often great, but sometimes just wrong.

 

Using Liquid takes just one second for an even moderately familiar user compared to the usual 10 seconds. Is this really a big difference? In reality it feels like the difference between playing a modern computer game on a high spec computer, versus stumbling along with lag and this is the difference between being in flow and being frustrated, except with text on your Mac you don't know how frustrating it feels without Liquid since you haven't tried it with Liquid yet.

 

Remember that when it comes to interaction, higher speed is not just an improvement, it changes the medium: Look at slightly different images 24 times a second and it's no longer just a sequence of still images, it's a movie.

 

I really don't know how else to explain it but please have a look at the demo video above, read the reviews below and ideally try it yourself. Douglas Rushkoff goes so far as to say that “This counts as Mac OS Eleven”. Which is nice.

 

In less than one second you can do much of what you do every day. The result is that you expand your reach and deepen your grasp of the information which matters in your life.

 

 

 

Update

 

Liquid is localised for Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish,  Norwegian, Romanian, Russian and Turkish. So far. Liquid is free and features an optional low priced in-app upgrade to enable Translation and Custom Search functions.

 

You can now post to WordPress with Liquid.

 

 

 

Reviews

 

Macworld UK Liquid is highly recommended.

 

MEVVY Increase productivity and improve your workflow.

 

TUAW One of those utilities that you can't live without once you start using it.

 

Softpedia 4/5 stars.

 

The Next Web Lets you find amazing context to every word on the Internet.

 

Cult Of Mac Liquid Helps Information Flow Smoothly.

 

LifeHacker Speeds up transferring text between apps, searching, translating, and more.

 

BBC So useful you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

 

CNN A great tool.

 

Wired Information wants to be Liquid.

 

 

App Store Reviews

 

Very Productive Utility ★★★★★ by buideal mor - Version 4.0 - May 28, 2013. I am using this to replace keywords on a library of photographs, translation is only a few clicks away. I have not even scratched the surface of all the uses but it has already paid for itself in time saved. An issue with functionality in was resolved quickly and directly by Frode its developer. Recommended! Stephen Fry was not wrong!

 

Extremely useful ★★★★★ by Archimedes3.14159 - Version 4.0 - Mar 29, 2013 (USA). I just bought this this morning, and I am very impressed. It is easy to add new search engines -- I added some for Google exact search (puts quotes around the search pattern), Google Books, Google Scholar, NerdQuery, and StackOverflow. More to come. Some of the reviews had complaints about the UI which I don't understand. Adding search engines was trivial and the UI is eminently clear and discoverable. Perhaps it has improved a lot from earlier versions. This is what everyone who writes and reads needs on a computer -- instant access to dictionaries, translations, and searches. Great program.

 

Its a winner with amazing help online ★★★★★ by O well its me - Version 4.0 - Apr 24, 2013 (UK). I purchased after reading excellant review in MacUser mag. Lots of features that worked great but I had a problem working out how to use the copy citation function. So I email their helpdesk and minutes later I get a reply from Frode Hegland (CEO). After a series of emails from Frode I get all the information I need. Unbelievable level of service. Great product, great service and great value. You know it makes sense, go on try it and then buy it!

 

VERY USEFUL ★★★★★ by jpbeekhuis - Version 4.0 - Mar 22, 2013 (Switzerland) This is the most useful helper on my Mac and believe that everybody who has used it will agree with that.