whatever happened, happened

I found out about Blast the other day. Long story short, the menubar application gives me quick access to recently opened files/folders as well as newly created/modified ones. While it is certainly not the first app to do so, I prefer it to the other as Blast doesn’t put yet another icon in my Dock. I shot its developers an email and got a review copy, so without further ado, here go my quick review after using it in the last 2 days:

What I like

• Being a menubar application, Blast gets out of my way and only pops out when I need it. No accidental Cmd+Tab.
• I can interact with items the way I want. Open them directly, reveal them in Finder, or drag & drop them to other folder.
• Full keyboard support. Love it.

What I don’t like

• There seems to be a problem with the menubar icon. It’s still in highlighted state when I dismiss the app by clicking outside the pop out interface and requires an extra click to go away, which is kind of annoying.

What I’d love to see in future versions

• Apart from the Exclusion list, there should be an Inclusion list to filter exactly which items to display in the app. I don’t care much about my recently opened PHP files while I’m in TextMate, neither about my recently edited Objective-C files while I’m Xcoding.
• The ability to ‘quick look’ an item using the Space bar would be a nice touch. Another possible action could be ‘navigate to this folder in Terminal’.

On the whole, Blast is a good addition to my (already crowded) menubar. The price is a reasonable one for a Mac app ($9.95) and the developers are easy to reach (I got my email answered within hours). So, if the built-in Recent Items functionality doesn’t cut it for you, try out this little app and see if it improves your work flow.