Launchy

Launchy is an interesting Windows application which provides you with an alternative and quicker way of accessing your programs. It’s a small program which loads with Windows but it stays out of the way until you press Alt+Space.

Launchy

When you do this, it’ll ask you to start typing the name of the program you want to launch. The first time I used it and typed ‘f’ it thought I wanted Fox. When I typed up to ‘fire’ it thought I wanted Xfire. Only when I typed ‘firef’ did it know I wanted to launch Firefox.

The second time, it had learnt that I probably wanted Firefox and just typing in ‘f’ will give me Firefox.

It can also be configured to load music, documents and favourites entries. It’s a nice way of launching an application quickly without faffing about with the Start Menu and the endless submenus you may have. You don’t have to think about who manufactured or authored the game; you just type it’s name.

My Start Menu "programs" list currently fills 3 columns even though I’ve been making an effort to keep to 2 columns. I haven’t tried Vista so I’m not sure whether this works on a similar system to Vista’s start menu which allows you to enter a program name.

6 thoughts on “Launchy”

A similar tool for OS X has existed for a while. It’s called Quicksilver, and behave just like that. It also has extra functionality. An example is:

1) Invoke Quicksilver (Ctrl + Space)

2) Begin to type a filename

3) Once it’s found, press Tab

4) Select the option to attach to an email

5) Type in the name of the person I want to send it to (looks it up in my address book)

I generally just use it as an application launcher, but there is a lot of things it can do; favourites, music control (load playlists, etc.), terminal commands, file browsing… All with the keyboard.

I find using the keyboard far faster than using the mouse for most tasks. I didn’t know such a thing existed for Windows. Thanks for the heads up