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Launchy. Condensed minimalist awesomeness.
Recoil42
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've been using this neat little gadget for the last few days, and it's pretty damn awesome, and I just had to share.
http://launchy.net/
Launchy is "The Open Source Keystroke Launcher for Windows". Well, that's what they say.
I like to think of it as "autocomplete for everything" or "Windows+R on Steroids"...and yeah, it's kinda like Quicksilver too, before the macheads get all riled up. But whatever you want to call it, it is awesome.
To expound, here's how it works:
Launchy is really, at it's heart, like I said, one part windows' run dialog on steroids, and one part autocomplete for everything. It's a skinnable box that runs underneath windows, not showing up in the tray or taskbar, an stays hidden until you need it, calling it up with a keystroke combo, the default of which is alt-space.
It then works on indexing your stuff. You can tell it which directories to index, though by default it indexes your start menu, and all your Firefox bookmarks.
Whenever you want to do something, just hit alt-space, and launchy will pop up onto your screen, on top of all your other windows.
Just start typing what you want. As you type, Launchy figures out what you want, and immediately pops up its best guess.
Hit enter, and boom, your program, file, bookmark, or directory is opened.
If Launchy's first guess was wrong, wait about a second, and up will pop, beneath the launchy box, an autocomplete-style box listing launchy's alternate guesses.
It's quick as hell, and it's amazing how much the user experience improves when you can call up what you want this fast, and don't have to keep switching between mouse and keyboard.
Wait.... So what, Recoil? Windows Vista and OSX both have things similar to this, with Spotlight, and whatever-it's-called-in-Vista
True, but XP doesn't have it, and what's really impressed me about Launchy is something that Vista and OSX's search just kinda miss out on --- ridiculously fast speed. The great thing about Launchy is it takes speed to ridiculous lengths. It may not seem like much, but in both vista and osx, you gotta grab for that mouse, and click the spotlight or search buttons, and then browse through the list of results, clicking on the intended choice.
That's where Launchy shines. No giant list of results to browse through, not even a single button to click. Just a minimalist box, and a icon+label to signify it's found what you want. It's just so snappy, too. The delay between pressing the launchy keystroke and it popping up on the screen is quite literally imperceptible. And then you just go.
I want to pop up penny arcade on the screen, its become a simple sequence of four keystrokes. alt spacebar to pop up launchy, then 'p', after which launchy will instantly suggest penny arcade, hit enter, and I'm gold. alt+space, p, enter.
All kinds of nifty little other features too. Like, oh, I forget, what's 53*76 again? built in calculator....boom:
Far faster than using the start menu, even more minimalist than a dock (and more useful too), and it's daaaaamn snappy.
http://launchy.net/
Launchy is "The Open Source Keystroke Launcher for Windows". Well, that's what they say.
I like to think of it as "autocomplete for everything" or "Windows+R on Steroids"...and yeah, it's kinda like Quicksilver too, before the macheads get all riled up. But whatever you want to call it, it is awesome.
To expound, here's how it works:
Launchy is really, at it's heart, like I said, one part windows' run dialog on steroids, and one part autocomplete for everything. It's a skinnable box that runs underneath windows, not showing up in the tray or taskbar, an stays hidden until you need it, calling it up with a keystroke combo, the default of which is alt-space.
It then works on indexing your stuff. You can tell it which directories to index, though by default it indexes your start menu, and all your Firefox bookmarks.
Whenever you want to do something, just hit alt-space, and launchy will pop up onto your screen, on top of all your other windows.
Just start typing what you want. As you type, Launchy figures out what you want, and immediately pops up its best guess.
Hit enter, and boom, your program, file, bookmark, or directory is opened.
If Launchy's first guess was wrong, wait about a second, and up will pop, beneath the launchy box, an autocomplete-style box listing launchy's alternate guesses.
It's quick as hell, and it's amazing how much the user experience improves when you can call up what you want this fast, and don't have to keep switching between mouse and keyboard.
Wait.... So what, Recoil? Windows Vista and OSX both have things similar to this, with Spotlight, and whatever-it's-called-in-Vista
True, but XP doesn't have it, and what's really impressed me about Launchy is something that Vista and OSX's search just kinda miss out on --- ridiculously fast speed. The great thing about Launchy is it takes speed to ridiculous lengths. It may not seem like much, but in both vista and osx, you gotta grab for that mouse, and click the spotlight or search buttons, and then browse through the list of results, clicking on the intended choice.
That's where Launchy shines. No giant list of results to browse through, not even a single button to click. Just a minimalist box, and a icon+label to signify it's found what you want. It's just so snappy, too. The delay between pressing the launchy keystroke and it popping up on the screen is quite literally imperceptible. And then you just go.
I want to pop up penny arcade on the screen, its become a simple sequence of four keystrokes. alt spacebar to pop up launchy, then 'p', after which launchy will instantly suggest penny arcade, hit enter, and I'm gold. alt+space, p, enter.
All kinds of nifty little other features too. Like, oh, I forget, what's 53*76 again? built in calculator....boom:
Far faster than using the start menu, even more minimalist than a dock (and more useful too), and it's daaaaamn snappy.
Recoil42 on
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After indexing my rather large anime and music collections I can see large potential. Just whack in the series title and episode or music title and bam, off you go. Nice find.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
You can't use a * in a filename in any filesystem I've ever heard of.
edit: Oh wait, here's one Launchy is freeware
edit2: Initial impressions are that AppRocket is a whole lot simpler to setup (well, no setup for AppRocket) and just generally nicer, but Launchy is free. So yeah.
Also I like it a lot, it works great. Very nice find.
AppRocket does this all automatically, and well.
addendum: man this is just totally win
I never got the point of them indexing your music/video collection, though.
Ah. That setup.
... I had no idea.
This is a great tool, something I was jealous of when my friend showed it to me on his mac.
He's using Royal Vista. At least, I'm 95% sure it's Royal Vista..
And is this program, like, Quicksilver for Windows?
It doesn't do nearly as much as quicksilver. Its only an application launcher AFAIK.
quicksilver > *
Gigglio is absolutely correct, Royale Vista 1.5.4, specifically left shellstyle variant.
Heh, looks like I have my own little desktop "sauce please!" thread here.... not the intention of this thread, but hey, what can you do.
The calendar is rainlendar, skinned with the Lucid theme.
http://www.rainlendar.net/cms/index.php
http://www.customize.org/list/rainlendar/0/5/rank-desc/lucid
Wallpaper:
http://picasaweb.google.com/recoil/Wallpapers
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
WiiU: jooncole (Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate)
3DS: 2122-5983-8919
Vista probably.
Yeah..
edit - Echoooooo!
WiiU: jooncole (Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate)
3DS: 2122-5983-8919
Edit: I figured it out. It's .directory for anyone else that's interested.
I actually really like this program. It's small, it's efficient. It does what it's supposed to do, and it does it quickly.
Now I don't have to go C:\Downloads\Music\Folder2\Not Porn\Seriously Not porn\lesbians\not porn\hotbabes.avi
I can just type hotbabes into this thing.
I can arrow down with the keys and press enter, so it's not that big of a deal. I just wondered why it would clear itself like that.
That's an odd bug.
Why would it matter if you already have your hands on the keyboard from entering the keyword anyways?
No, it's not an automatic crawling type indexer like Google's, it's more of a one-time, when-windows-starts-up type thing.
http://picasaweb.google.com/recoil/Wallpapers
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
Thanks
Then again, so can everyone else.
i'm guessing it launches the folder instead of playing the audio file, so you can browse the entire album for example.