Johnux.com

The Keystroke Launcher for Windows -

If you’ve never used this before, Launchy is just about the handiest tool for anyone who needs to use Windows. It’s fully skinnable, with a large variety of themes already available(some included with launchy). Launchy is a small program that runs in the background and usually only uses a very light 10mb of memory. By default pressing alt+space brings it up regardless of what applications are currently open and from there all you have to do is type what you need. For example: Normally if you need to access a program you find yourself lurking around your programs list from the start menu(which seems awfully lethargic most of the time, doesn’t it?), or you wind up returning to your desktop to access shortcuts that make for desktop clutter, or by using the quick launch on the toolbar which takes up space that could be used for open programs. With launchy installed, all you have to do is hit alt+space and then type in the first few characters of what you’re looking for until launchy determines what you are actually after.

So here we go – I’m working on this Blog and want to upload some screenshots I’m taking. I hit alt+space and this comes up:

I then start typing Dreamweaver:















Only 3 characters into it Dreamweaver has become the best match and all I now have to do is hit enter to use it.

There are a couple of alternatives to Launchy in Windows which include Keybreeze and Google Desktop. Keybreeze is cool also, and allows you to save notes in it, which some might enjoy. Google Desktop however is a bit too heavy(resource wise) for me and it feels like it’s kind of taking over your computer by comparison. Having used all three, I like the response time of Launchy and prefer it over the others and I highly recommend it to anyone trying to increase their productivity.

-Johnux