One of the reasons we love PCs is that they can be configured to do things our way. If you don't like something about the way your PC functions, there is a good chance that you can change a setting or install software to change it. Case in point: keyboard launchers. No, we are not talking about catapults that will throw keyboards at your opponent, although that is an interesting idea. We're talking about applications that let you bypass the Windows Start menu and taskbar icons to launch programs, locate key folders and files, open Windows Control Panel tools, and a lot more, using only a few keypresses on your trusty plank. PC power users have long known that keyboard commands are faster than using the mouse. This is true within applications that you use a lot, such as your web browser and word processor, and for common operating system functions. Raise your hand if you use Ctrl+t for a new tab or Ctrl+s to save a document? How about Alt+Tab to switch applications? There are hundreds of these shortcuts built into our software and OS, and many of us have them burned into our muscle memory for instant recall as we use our machines every day.
Each version of Windows has come with additional keyboard-based commands. Microsoft knows that one of the fundamental rules of PC productivity is to keep your hands on the keyboard, and they know that adding additional well-designed keyboard commands and shortcuts helps keep power users happy. Microsoft also knows that making Windows easier to use is critical for the majority of users who don't geek out over shortcuts and hyper-productivity. The result is that each new Windows OS seems to get better for those of us who love shortcuts, while at the same time the graphical user interface gets easier, and frankly slower, for mouse-dependent users who need more guidance and do not use the shortcuts. All of this is to say that compared to quick keyboard commands, each time you reach for the mouse you're slowing yourself down, and that situation has actually gotten worse with each easier-to-use release of Windows. If you have bothered to read this far, we know you want better efficiency and productivity, so let's look at keyboard launchers.
Windows 10 Taskbar Search vs. Launchy
If you're using Windows 10, you have a built-in keyboard launcher. The Windows 10 Taskbar Search feature gives you the ability to locate applications to launch, settings to change, and to discover folders and files on your system. It works well enough, but some of us find it a bit slow and clunky, especially when opening files and folders. It also lacks the type of customization that many power users prefer, and it can't be easily extended with downloadable plug-ins to add radical new features. We should not bash Windows 10 Taskbar Search too much though, because it provides us with a reliable, built-in keyboard launcher.
To use the Windows 10 Taskbar as a keyboard application launcher, simply press the Windows key on your keyboard, then type the first few characters of the name of the application you want to launch. Windows displays a list of matching applications. You use the arrow keys to select the correct app, and Enter to launch it. For example, pressing the Windows key and typing "no" might list both Notepad and Norton Security. The Enter key will launch whichever is selected.
The rest of this article is for those of you that want to take things further, so let's dive deeper and take keyboard launching to the next level.
How Launchy Works
Meet Launchy, a free and open-source, keyboard-based application launcher that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Linux. Although Launchy runs on all of these operating systems, this how-to guide is going to focus on Windows.
Here's how it works: Launchy loads itself in the background when you log in to Windows. It quietly and quickly builds a list of all the applications in your Windows start menu, as well as any folders and other options that you have configured. Launchy then waits silently in the background until you call on it. To see the user interface, you type Alt+space, or another hotkey that you configure. The user interface is a minimalist floating box or bar.
You can configure what the user interface looks like by choosing from a list of built-in options or downloading skins provided by the Launchy community.
Once the floating box or bar is displayed, you start typing characters that appear in the name of the application or item you want to launch. Unlike the Windows 10 Taskbar Search, Launchy looks for the closest match of any part of the name, so you can type "pad" and Launchy will list both Notepad and Wordpad. You pick the correct app with the arrow keys and Launchy launches it.
There is actually a lot more going on here than what first meets the eye. Launchy is smart. It does not require exact word matching. If you type "np" it will suggest Notepad. Launchy looks at what you type and displays its best guess based on the characters and how often you use the item you finally select. This means that the first time you launch a program with Launchy you may have to select it from a list with the arrow keys, but the next time you type those characters, Launchy will suggest the item you last selected as the first option. At first, Launchy's intelligence sounds like a small optimization and a minor feature, but in day-to-day practical use it turns out to be an enormous advantage that makes using Launchy smooth and effortless. This functionality makes Launchy marginally better than the launcher built into Windows 10, but to be honest, if this was all Launchy did then we would probably not get all that excited about it. But there's more. A lot more.
Launchy has a plug-in model that extends what it can do. With a bit of hacking and configuration you can use Launchy's intelligent character-matching chops to create quick shortcuts to do just about anything you can imagine on your PC, from changing system settings to posting events to Google Calendar. As we said earlier, the big advantage of Launchy is flexibility and extensibility through plugins and configuration. If you're interested in this type of customization, then your time learning and tweaking Launchy is well spent. If your needs are basic and you just want to launch programs with the keyboard, then Windows 10 may provide all you need with the Windows 10 Taskbar Search feature.
Installation and Basics
Let's walk through the installation and basic use of Launchy, then set up a few customizations to amp up your keyboard productivity superpowers. To follow along you will need a Windows PC running any version of Windows from Windows XP to Windows 10.
Start by downloading the latest stable version of Launchy from http://www.launchy.net/. We'll use Launchy version 2.5 and both Windows 7 and Windows 10 in our examples. The Launchy2.5.exe installer is under 5MB and provides a typical, Wizard-driven setup process. To keep things simple, let's choose all the defaults when installing Launchy. When asked how Launchy should be installed, select the default Normal installation instead of the portable option, but note that portable installation to a thumb drive or other media is possible if you want to do that in the future. When the installation is complete, the default Launchy user interface will appear in the center of your screen.
Pressing the key combination Alt+space will toggle visibility of the Launchy user interface. Go ahead and press this combination a few times to make the Launchy interface appear and disappear. Launchy continues to run in the background even when you don't see it. Note that when Alt+space makes Launchy appear, the focus changes to Launchy and a blinking cursor can be seen. Try typing "np"; this will bring up a list of applications that Launchy has indexed that contain these characters. Notepad should be on this list, but may not be the first entry. (If nothing comes up, try pressing F5 to force Launchy to rebuild its database.)
Use the arrow keys to select Notepad and press Enter. Launchy will open Notepad and then hide itself. Close Notepad and again type the hotkey Alt+space. Launchy appears with the last used program and keyboard shortcut already entered, in our case the program Notepad and the "np" characters. If you need to launch the most recently used program you only have to press enter and it will launch.
This time, we'll use Launchy to run the Windows Update tool on Windows 7. We could type the entire name (Windows Update), but picking a few letters and typing only "wup" finds it with even less effort.
Press Enter to launch Windows Update and automatically close the Launchy interface. Notice that this time we found and launched a tool from the Windows Control Panel instead of a regular program like Notepad. This worked because Launchy has a plugin called Controly installed by default that indexes the Control Panel tools and makes them available in your keyboard searches.
Type Alt+space to bring up Launchy and again type "np" to find Notepad. Notice that this time Notepad is the first item in the list. Launchy has learned that we like to type "np" for Notepad, and it finds it almost instantly, displaying the Notepad icon in the box in the center of the interface. In fact, Launchy displays only Notepad for a brief time allowing us to press enter without any delay or other options appearing in the drop-down menu.
If you hesitate and don't press Enter right away, Launchy displays the drop-down menu with other choices in case you actually wanted some other item containing those characters. This is by design and it allows you to quickly type the sequence [Alt+space "np" Enter] to launch the Notepad program without loading a long list of other options.
Enough with the Notepad examples. As a keyboard ninja and power user concerned with productivity, you should be using a keyboard-driven text editor like GNU Emacs and not Notepad, but that's a how-to for another day.
Customizing Launchy
Now that we have used Launchy to open programs and Windows Control Panel tools, we should look at Launchy's configuration options and set up a few custom tweaks of our own.
Bring up Launchy's user interface by pressing Alt+space. Right-click anywhere on the Launchy interface except the area where you type text. This will bring up a context menu that contains the Options menu.
While you're here, note that you can directly open the Options menu from the main Launchy interface by typing Control+, (comma). You can also tell Launchy to rebuild its index of items to launch by pressing F5. For now, select the Options menu.
Launchy's options are contained on a series of tabs. The Catalog tab is perhaps the most important, so we'll start there. It allows you to decide which folders and files are included or not included when Launchy scans your system and builds its internal database.
The default list of directories allows Launchy to find program shortcuts that appear in the start menu. You can add additional directories to the Catalog list so that Launchy knows where you keep your files. For each directory that you add, you can limit what Launchy will search with a list of file types, such as *.*, *.doc, *.pdf, *.mp3, etc.
Just because you can search for all these files does not mean that this is the best way to configure and use Launchy. If you leave file type blank for a given directory, and you check "Include directories" then Launchy will search for only the names of the folders and subfolders, not the files themselves. Including only the folders and not the files can be a useful technique to keep things uncluttered. If you organize your work into well named directories, you can type the name of a project, an album, or anything you have organized and find it quickly. For example, if you want to find your plans for building an outdoor pizza oven, and you know that you keep your projects in folders that Launchy indexes, you can fire up Lanchy with Alt+space, type "piz", and Launchy will suggest the folder Outdoor Pizza Oven.
Pressing enter will open Windows Explorer, opening the exact folder you need without the need to navigate a rat's nest of deeply nested folders.
Launchy certainly can index all of your files, but we find it more focused and effective to tune which folders and file types are being indexed. In your music folder you might decide to include only files matching the pattern *.mp3 and in your photos folder only *.jpg. Our advice is not to get too carried away here adding every file you can to Launchy. If you feel like you want to broadly search for every file name on your system, you should check out the Everything Search Engine from http://www.voidtools.com/, which is a tool that is optimized for just this task. With a bit of hacking the Everything Search Engine can even be integrated for use with Launchy.
But you may have a specific location, such as your Dropbox folder, where you really want Launchy to be able to find and launch every file by name. To do this you would add your Dropbox folder C:\Users\YourName\Dropbox to the Catalog list, specify a file type of *.*, and check the "Include directories" box. This will cause Launchy to index every file and folder in your Dropbox and make them available within your Launchy search.
The General tab lets you change the hotkey from the Alt+space default, as well as change many other options, including how often Launchy updates its index of files and folders.
The Skins tab allow you to choose how the user interface looks. We like the minimalist Black Glass skin the best, but this is a purely aesthetic choice, it has no impact on how Launchy functions.
Note that minimalist skins like Black Glass do not have any buttons for opening the Options dialog, so you will have to right click on the user interface and choose Options from the context menu, or jump to it directly by typing Ctrl+, from the main Launchy interface. If none of the built-in skins are your thing, you should check out the Launchy Gallery on DeviantArt for community-provided options. (http://www.deviantart.com/browse/all/customization/skins/applaunchers/launchy/?order=5)
Using Plugins
Plugins are the key to Launchy's extensibility. Launchy comes with six official, built-in plugins, but you can download more from the Launchy website. The Plugins tab allows you to see the installed plugins and to change the configuration of plugins that support customization.
Plugins are like tiny programs that give Launchy the ability to do new things. For example, the Weby plugin lets you launch websites with a query term directly from Launchy. We used the Controly plugin earlier. It searches for Control Panel tools like Windows Update, Task Scheduler, or User Accounts, and makes them available to run from Launchy. We can use Launchy to run any command on our PC with the Runner plugin.
Here is an example to get you started:
The Weby plugin comes preconfigured with a number of websites, such as IMDB. To use a preconfigured site such as IMDB, bring up Launchy with Alt+space, type "imd" TAB and the name of a movie you want to look up. Launchy should autocomplete the word IMDB and prompt you with an arrow for typing your query, in this case Godfather. Pressing enter will open your default browser to an IMDB search for Godfather.
Let's set up a new Weby configuration to search the Maximum PC website. Start by doing a search on the www.maximumpc.com website in your web browser to discover the URL format for searches. If we search for "NVMe" and then look at the URL we see http://www.maximumpc.com/search/?q=NVMe
The Weby plugin uses the %1 symbol to represent the query term, so if we replace "NVMe" with "%1" we get the URL: http://www.maximumpc.com/search/?q=%1
Next, we add this specially formatted URL to the Weby plugin and give it the name "Maximum PC"
To use our new Maximum PC search feature in Launchy, we type Alt+space, "mpc", TAB, and then what we want to search for, perhaps "Steam," and press enter.
The Maximum PC website should load in the default browser with the search results for Steam.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of configuring Launchy. If you program, you can create batch files, or use a plugin to execute Python scripts that give you nearly unlimited automation flexibility, all triggered by a few characters in Launchy.
A Hack for "Modern/Universal/Metro-style" Windows Apps
There is an arcane trick for getting Launchy to locate and run those Modern-style Windows 8 and Windows 10 applications, such as the built-in Windows 10 Calculator and Alarms & Clock. Getting them to work with Launchy is a two-part process. First, you need to create a folder to hold shortcuts for these apps, and use Launchy's Options menu to add this folder to the Launchy Catalog. Second, you need to use a Windows trick to create shortcuts to the apps you want Launchy to include, and copy them to the folder you created. Let's do this now:
Decide where to create the folder that will hold shortcuts to your Modern-style apps. A folder such as C:\Users\YourName\LaunchyShortcuts is a good choice. Create the folder and leave it open in Windows Explorer for now, so we can drag-and-drop into it.
Open Launchy with Alt+space and then open the Options menu by right-clicking and selecting Options from the context menu. Select the Catalog tab. Click the + symbol to add the LaunchyShortcuts folder you created in the previous step. Click the other + symbol and enter *.* into the File Types box for this folder. Click OK to close the Launchy options.
Open any folder in Windows Explorer and paste the following into the address bar:
%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{4234d49b-0245-4df3-b780-3893943456e1}
Pressing Enter will open up a new Windows Explorer folder called Applications, with icons for all of the programs installed on your system.
Locate the icon for the Modern application you want to be able to run from Launchy. For our example we will use the Alarms & Clock app in Windows 10. Drag this icon from the Applications folder into your LaunchyShortcuts folder. Force Launchy to update its database by using Alt+space to open Launchy and then pressing F5. You should now be able to search and launch the Alarms & Clock app from Launchy. You will need to manually drag-and-drop each Modern app from the Applications folder to your LaunchyShortcuts folder to make them compatible with Launchy.
Doing More
We have only just scratched the surface of what Launchy is capable of doing. If you like the Launchy way of interacting with your PC, you can extend its capabilities considerably with plugins and command-line tools like NirCmd (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html). With a little setup and experimenting you can use Launchy to make advanced calculations, empty your Recycle Bin, kill tasks, turn off your monitor, change your system volume, and even turn off your PC.
