Windows: Launchy - Keystroke App Launcher

And now on the Windows side of things, we have Launchy, a keystroke only application launcher, quite the opposite of Sapiens, which I talked about yesterday. Launchy doesn't use the mouse at all. It's designed for those of us who love keyboard shortcuts and often go quite a while during the day without ever touching the mouse.

It's a lightweight program that runs in the background. There's not even a system tray icon, which makes me very happy. When you need to launch a program, you hit Alt+Space and up pops the launcher box:



You simply start typing the program you want to launch and it guesses what you want...quite accurately, too. And it learns, too. Say you have two programs that both start with the same few letters. It will learn which one you launch more often and bring that one up first:

You can then just hit Enter and the application starts up. Or, you can wait a few seconds, and a drop down appears with all the other programs that match what you typed.

Launchy also has other, more advanced features. You can type "Weather" then hit Tab, then your zip code and it will open up a browser window with a Weather.com page. Or just start typing 2+2 and it gives you the answer. Very cool stuff, all of which you can read about here.

Launchy is completely free and open source. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

.