If you have a lot of applications and programs installed on your system. You might know how hard is to find and open some programs through the regular windows start menu, right? In most cases, you will spend precious time to find the program you want to open and use on your system.
The most effective way to find programs quickly and open them with a few clicks is Launchy. This application allows you to find and open programs on your computer more effectively. It’s completely free and easy-to-use for anyone.
User Interface and Features
Launchy has very nice and intuitive user-interface. Allowing you to even customize it with own or downloaded skins. I’ve installed and tested this application on the Windows Vista 64-bit with SP2 included.
After installation, application runs in the background – scanning the primary areas where application software might be installed on your system. You can call it out by pressing the CTRL+Space keyboard combination – note that this is the default combination and you can change it in the settings.
The algorithm and process is based to match the word in the search box to the file, program or folder you’re looking for. By default, Launchy scans the Start Menu, but you can set any folder or file to include in the index.
I have to say that once you get used of it, you won’t ever replace it with any other program. It simply works just great! It’s smart enough to find the most related programs and offers you later the similar results. For the example, I use Windows Live Writer a lot. When I type out “W” in the Launchy, it detect that I use this application a lot and gives me the right results.
I have to say that in most cases, this little application do the work just right! Launchy can work with the internet. You can use it to search on the Google, YouTube or any other supported site or service.
Also, it has a option where it’ll scan your Firefox and IE bookmarks to find the most appropriate suggestion or URL for you. Also, you can even add your customized search to open by the default.
Launchy has lots of skins to choose from
Things I don’t Like
I’d like to see the feature where we can run the command prompt directly in the application. Anyway, Launchy doesn’t allows you to directly run the cmd commands, but can search the cmd in your computer. Also, it has a few bugs and compatibility problems – specially with the plug-ins.
Final Thoughts
In general, Launchy is one of the most advanced and most effective way to open programs you want! In most cases works just fine and it’s very fast.
I’d recommend you to download, install and use it on your system. Right now it supports Windows and Linux operating systems, so the most users can enjoy in this nice, small and effective application.
Launchy (2.2 MiB, 65 hits)
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.