Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher!

Let me start by saying that I love to use shortcuts and my keyboard as this makes things easier and also it’s much faster. Even when surfing on the internet I have my hands on the keyboard to use CTRL+W to close tabs, CTRL+T to open new tabs, CTRL+SHIFT+T to re-open a closed tab in Firefox etc. I even use the Page Up & Page Down keys on my keyboard to scroll through the pages.

Therefor I’m always looking for ways to win more time when using my PC. For example when you need to start a program or a bookmark when typing. In this case you need to let go your keyboard, grab your mouse and navigate your way in order to start the program/bookmark you’re looking for. This can be time consuming and can be done much easier when using Launchy. I installed this application some days ago and I’m loving it!

Launchy is a small application which runs in the background and can be activated using ALT+SPACE. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes! As soon as you’ve used the hotkey’s you’ll get a popup screen and you can start typing your search terms. As you can see here below Launchy starts to look for the program you’re looking for as soon as you’ve typed the first letter. The search is getting narrowed when typing more letters. In my case I only needed to type Exc when wanted to open Excel.

However Launchy comes with more features;

• You can configure it to index any directory you wish too.
• You can choose what file types you want to search in that directory
• You can even set it to open up your favorite websites and even open your bookmarks!
• You can also download a bunch of plugins to have more functionality to Launchy.

By default, when it’s installed, Launchy only searches applications on your PC, but it can also be configured to index whatever you want. Adding a directory is simple – go into the options and navigate to the “Catalog” tab. Here, you can add as many directories as you want by selecting the “+” button. In addition to this, you can also choose what file types to include when you search the directory, for example, I added my “downloads” folder, but chose only to search for MP3 files within that folder, easy right?!

I have installed this on my Windows XP PC at work as well and I must say that it makes switching to programs when typing much easier! So give it a try; this might be a great tool for you as well.

Version: 2.5.0
OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7, MAC OS X, Linux
Language: English
License: Freeware (However you can donate money in case you would like to.)
Download Launchy: Click here…

About Behrad:

I'm 29 years "old", married to Jannie and about to be a daddy! We live happily in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
In 2006 I started BioTecK.net just to show/share my portfolio. After a while I started to blog about my experiences and stuff I do in my life, my interests; computers & computer related stuff, tips & tricks and basically everything which I want to share.
Read more about me, follow me on Twitter @BioTecK or contact me .