Launchy, Where Have You Been All My Life?

2008-06-07 15:34 - Tech

I'm confident I've heard of it before. Rather long ago, in fact. But I've just finally started using it in the past few weeks. Launchy is a sort of GUI command line, as much as an oxymoron that might sound like.

Screenshot of Launchy in action

In short, Launchy will make a quick index of all of your start menu (and anything else you configure it to index). At a keystroke, it's all available for launching directly. It only takes a few keystrokes to narrow down to exactly what you're looking for. And, in my experience, it learns well. If I type only "ed", which it initially completes wrongly, and manually choose EditPlus, it remembers that. Next time I type just "ed", it brings up what I'm looking for.

One drawback is the default shortcut. It's Alt-Space, a keystroke that already does something in Windows. I'm pretty sure that's the reason I blew it off when I first heard about it. All it takes though is a quick reconfiguration (I chose Win-Space, a minor change) and that only drawback is eliminated.

The putty-launchy-plugin also brings all my remote servers directly to hand, with the same typically few keystrokes. Truly useful.

Comments:

PCs were the last to have it.
2008-07-28 12:42 - CharlesMerriam

The Mac started this. The Linux version is Katapult, which uses ALT-SPACE to activate.

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