Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware
Launchy - Today's Free File
by Jason Clarke Mar 20th 2006 at 9:30AM
It seems like this series of application launchers just won't stop. In the comments for our post about the application launcher Colibri, Taylor mentions yet another launcher called, appropriately, Launchy. Being a sucker for this type of application, I couldn't wait to give it a try.
Launchy is a very slick application launcher. It sports a Vista-inspired theme complete with see-through glass edges, and is extremely small and fast. By default it only indexes your Start menu, however it can be manually configured to index any folder you like, and can even be told which file extensions to index.
If you've tried some of the other launchers we've recommended here but found them not quite your cup of tea, give Launchy a try.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jason H. said 10:04AM on 3-20-2006
Another thing to note is how fast Launchy has grown. It's gone through two different versions in the span of a month and its appearance has grown SIGNIFICANTLY! It really is an excellent application. I'm a sucker for new apps so my Start Menu takes at least 5 seconds to come up full now and Launchy helps out alot.
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Neil T. said 10:23AM on 3-20-2006
Presumably not to be confused with the Firefox extension of the same name - http://gemal.dk/mozilla/launchy.html .
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Taylor said 10:24AM on 3-20-2006
Wow, my name has been dropped on DownloadSquad. I feel famous. But yeah, Launchy is great and doesn't bog down your resources like some other keyboard launchers. I don't like the default hotkey (alt+space) as it is also the hotkey for the little window options (move, size, etc.) so I just change it to cntrl+space. And is doesn't have those nifty volume controls like Colibri, but there are other hotkey applications that handle volume adjustment. I love hotkeys, but I doubt I'll ever be able to use a machine completely without a mouse.
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Mike M said 1:13PM on 3-20-2006
It would be better if there was an option to tell Launchy not to index the start menu. Most programs when they put a folder into the start menu, they contain links to registration pages, uninstallers, readme files, etc. That adds a lot of information to the index that doesn't really need to be there. It also causes problems when these sorts of entries come up before the actual shortcut you're looking for. Back when I was using AppRocket, I made a folder of just shortcuts and set that to be the only thing to be indexed to avoid this. With a few more options, I think I'd start to use Launchy, I really would like a nice replacement for AppRocket (pain to have always glued to the top of the screen and on my machine it takes up roughly twice the system resources of Launchy).
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Taylor said 4:58PM on 3-20-2006
You're right about not being able to configure whether or not to index the start menu, I know some users would rather not. Maybe it will be added in an upcoming release.
Also, I think there's an option to hide approcket until the hotkey is pressed, but I couldn't tell you where it is, been a while since I used it.
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Mgs0008b221 said 5:06PM on 3-20-2006
... at least someone else listens to Cake. :)
Looks very slick, and runs quite fast.
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Alex Ezell said 7:55PM on 3-20-2006
SlickRun is still the best.
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anthnoy said 7:58PM on 3-20-2006
and goats go to hell
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