Launchy

Do you find yourself going the same routine of traversing the Start menu of Windows daily? Go to Start, go to All Programs, go to some company name that provided you with the tool, and finally the launcher for the tool or application you want to execute. I found that pretty tedious and plain sucks.

Which is why I use the Windows XP Start menu pin-up, recent documents, the quick launch taskbar, and the desktop alot. I also use RK Launcher, a little docking program where you add shortcuts to it. But these shortcuts had shortcomings too. I have to manually set up all the shortcuts, for each computer that I use regularly.

Now I don't have to anymore. Check out Launchy, an application launcher for Windows. It automatically indexes your Start menu by default and all you need to do is hit ALT-Space to bring up its window, type in some combination of characters that match the application you want, and it'll find the application you want. Useful no? Especially so for a "keyboarder" like me. It's pretty too, with its own site for user-submitted skins. And it doesn't just indexes your Start menu. By default it supports the Firefox keywords I mentioned in my previous post! It also has it's own quick search for several useful sites plus a simple built-in calculator. Hate the daily digging down into your personal directory of files that's over 5 levels deep? Well, Launchy can browse directly to the directory you want; all you need to do is type out c: and use the tab key for auto-completion. That's not all! You can have Launchy index whatever directory you want, for whatever file extension you want. No more having to locate that one particular ebook or mp3 or movie that you have among thousands of similar files. And finally, you can even install Launchy on your pendrive and have it work (once you rebuild the index, which is fast) on any computer!

See also:

• Add the Run Command to Launchy
• Tweaking Launchy