Extending Launchy

I am a recent switcher from Mac to Windows (long story, but suffice it to say those Laptop Hunter commercials are not entirely bogus). Anyway, I love Quicksilver on MacOS, and was stoked to find out about Launchy, but can anyone tell me the best way to make Launchy index more than just my Start menu? Quicksilver indexes basically your whole system, giving you access to just about any file, but out of the box, Launchy doesn't seem to do this. Can I just add C:\ to the directories in the Catalog dialog, or will this be overload, with all the drivers and .dll's and miscellaneous cruft in Windows? If so, what paths should I add to give me access to most, if not all, of my documents and programs through Launchy? Thanks.

user7540

Posted 2009-08-21T20:55:32.370

Reputation: 41

Answers

The Start Menu should contain links to all of your applications. If it doesn't, then create a folder with shortcuts to your other applications and index that.

I would stick with only indexing your "My Documents" folder, and avoid indexing the whole drive. Launchy doesn't handle that as well.

The How-To Geek

Posted 2009-08-21T20:55:32.370

Reputation: 5 482

1+1 for creating a folder of important shortcuts. And definitely only index the things you need. – Umber Ferrule – 2009-08-21T22:11:44.540

avoid indexing the whole drive. Launchy doesn't handle that as well

agreed, i recommend Everything as 'file finder' and SlickRun as 'keystroke launcher', a far more powerful combination.

Molly7244

Posted 2009-08-21T20:55:32.370

Reputation:

1Everything is awesome! I have no idea how it was done, but it's incredibly fast. – alex – 2009-08-21T21:20:41.337

I would add:

C:\Documents and Settings

C:\Program Files

That should get most of what you want I would think.

EBGreen

Posted 2009-08-21T20:55:32.370

Reputation: 7 834

I would recommend against Program Files. You'll get a lot of DLLs and other crap that you don't need. The Start Menu should be enough. – Sasha Chedygov – 2009-08-21T22:02:10.143

1@musicfreak: why not index just *.exe for program files? – Umber Ferrule – 2009-08-21T22:12:16.647

The most powerful launcher for windows is Find and Run Robot. For more complete indexing, without causing any slowdowns or cruft is to combine it with the wonderful port of the linux locate command, Locate32.

Firstly, the heuristics for learning in FARR are much better than Launchy, still not as good as Quicksilver, but closer. FARR has some brilliant options, great alias system and a very powerful plugin mechanism. One of the plugins uses Locate32 to extend its indexing in a very light way to any internal/external drive.

The Tentacle

Posted 2009-08-21T20:55:32.370

Reputation: 4 621