Keyboard application launchers: Launchy for Windows

Launchy is a keyboard application launcher for Windows. Keyboard launchers are generally considered easier and faster at launching applications because a user’s hands never leave the keyboard. I’ve been using Launchy at home and at work for a couple of months, and could not go back to using my computer without a keyboard launcher. Launchy consumes just 12MB of memory (on my system), and becomes a natural way to open applications or perform other simple tasks because it is so fast. Launchy is open source and is designed to be skinnable and highly extensible.

Launchy indexes applications, scripts, and other items that are in the Start menu by default. If you want Launchy to index a certain item, put it into the start menu, or tell Launchy about additional folders to index through its preferences menu. Launchy can be launched with the “alt-space” keyboard shortcut, which can be confused with “ctrl-space” (used for code-completion in the Eclipse IDE by default), or with the keyboard shortcut to display the menu in a Windows XP MS-DOS command prompt window (if you were planning to paste a long command into the window for example).

Launchy for Windows

Launchy will also index your Firefox and Internet Explorer bookmarks, just start typing the title of the bookmark to bring it up. Launchy also ships with built-in keywords (case insensitive) for popular sites that support searching, allowing users to skip the step of going to the site home page before searching. For example: type imdb and hit “tab,” notice the vertical bar separating the keyword and your search query. Now type something to search IMDB.com for–Launchy will launch your default browser and perform the search. More keywords: google, weather, dictionary (dict), netflix, wikipedia, amazon (See all tips). Launchy can also be set up to index file types like JPEG or MP3.

Minor complaint: windows explorer will give you suggestions for a directory by just hitting “Tab”, for example, cycling through subdirectories. Launchy will give you suggestions, but seems to need a letter first, and won’t give subdirectory suggestions by just hitting “tab” repeatedly. I generally stick to Windows Explorer windows for browsing the file system as I feel it is slightly faster.

Quicksilver is a popular launcher for OS X with more features than Launchy. “Spotlight” in OS X (a “live search” implementation) performs similar application launching duties. Google Desktop also makes searching easy with the keyboard, with a search dialog that is launched by tapping “ctrl” twice. Application developers understand that even Windows users need faster and more usable ways of launching applications.

User-contributed extensions to Launchy are available for download here.

Similar applications

• Find and Run Robot (FARR)
• Quicksilver (on OS X)
• Keybreeze

Got a great tip for Launchy? Feel a competing application for Windows is superior? Please share in the comments.

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