Although I understand compressed air is recommended, I was about to physically remove these keys on my mid-2013 13-inch MacBook Air last week to see if there was dirt under them, but realizing the danger, I got a better idea and instead installed KeyUp, a nice free app that makes a clicking sound each time you push a key down, available from Irradiated Software. After using it for a few days, I confirmed that there was nothing mechanically wrong with my cmd or space key. My keys click, and thus are apparently working, every time. They never fail. But LaunchBar does not always activate on the first cmd+space. It always activates on the second try.
I smelled the trail of App Nap, the feature which Apple introduced in macOS 10.9 to conserve resources, which puts apps to sleep when they are not in use. In the Activity Monitor app (/Applications/Utilities), if you click in its menu: View > Columns, you can turn on the App Nap column and see this at work. It will indicate Yes for LaunchBar after you have not used LaunchBar for a few minutes, then change to No immediately when you use it.
Aha, I thought, although the feature to control App Nap per app has been removed from Finder's Get Info window in more recent macOS versions, supposedly you can still do it with this Terminal command:
Code: Select all
defaults write at.obdev.LaunchBar NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES
I did this, relaunched LaunchBar and after keeping an eye on Activity Monitor for 20 minutes, convinced myself that this command is successful in preventing App Nap. LaunchBar's App Nap column is always No and never switches to Yes.
But, unfortunately, disabling App Nap does not solve the problem. LaunchBar still often fails to always activate on the first cmd+ space, particularly if I have not used it in a few minutes. It always activates on the second try.
This issue is really a big negative in using LaunchBar. Has anyone else noticed this? Is there a fix?
I am using LaunchBar 6.9 and macOS 10.13 Beta 9 at this time. But this issue was present for many months when I was using macOS 10.12. It is definitely not a new issue with 10.13.