Windows 7 - Faster applications/windows switcher, e.g., by typing application's name?

I sometimes have many running applications and switching between them with Alt+Tab becomes very tedious. I would like to be able to switch between tasks/windows more quickly. The perfect solution for me would be an application that lets me start typing a window's title and offers a classic auto-complete drop down list to choose from.

Does anybody know of a technique, tool, or lightweight application that offers something similar to this?

Saggi Malachi

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 191

Answers

There is a free application called Switcher that boasts many features, one of which is a keyword search integration amongst all open applications. You can read a review of the application on Technospot.

cowgod

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 1 816

Windows just became a tiny bit more usable, thank you. – Cem Kalyoncu – 2016-04-03T07:03:32.510

It is however, somewhat slow when having an integrated graphics chip like in many laptops. I rarely used it on my laptop with a GMA 950 because of that. – Joey – 2009-10-10T09:21:48.743

It's pretty configurable (or at least, it is now), so you can turn off all the fancy animations and stuff, hopefully getting a bit more performance. – Phoshi – 2009-10-10T10:54:02.597

You might try a little app I wrote, Switcheroo, which is an incremental-search task-switcher for windows:

alt text

Switcheroo is for anyone who spends more time using a keyboard than a mouse. Instead of alt-tabbing through a (long) list of open windows, Switcheroo allows you to quickly switch to any window by typing in just a few characters of its title. It's inspired by Emacs's IDO mode buffer switching.

James Sulak

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 653

I've been using Switcheroo for a while and I like it very much. It has become an important part of my computer environment. Thank you for the application, also so far this is the only app I've found that differentiates the applications between Virtual Desktops (I use VirtuaWin) in Windows 10. You should consider updating the screenshot you've used. This old one doesn't do the latest version of the app justice. – Ghos3t – 2018-06-07T08:24:25.403

The lovely autohotkey scripting language!

#NoTrayIcon 
settitlematchmode, RegEx
regex= i)%1%
sleep 100
winactivate, %regex%
ExitApp
Return

This takes a command line option of what window you want to switch to (case insensitive regex), so is perfect for somebody already using an application launcher such as Executor, Launchy, so on.

Phoshi

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 22 001

+1 I used to use a similar script with SlickRun. Now I use it with Promptu, which is sort of an expanded SlickRun in which value lists can be configured, so I can do 'ff' and Promptu will translate it to 'FireFox,' or 'xl' to 'Microsoft Excel', for example. – Jay – 2010-06-10T16:09:05.057

Well I'm not really using it yet, but Enso let's you hold caps lock and type what you want to do - including "go windowname" and it auto-completes with dropdown.

Oskar Duveborn

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 2 616

I thought Enso's hotkey was capslock? A stellar use of the key, I must admit, and one I nicked using autohotkey :D – Phoshi – 2009-10-10T11:29:11.980

1Yes of course, my fingers typed something completely different from what my brain wanted me to ^^ most likely something about auto-completion usually being related to the tab key perhaps? Thx ^^ – Oskar Duveborn – 2009-10-10T11:58:16.243

Had a similar problem and solved it by writing this alternative task switcher: http://www.oelgaard.dk/software/torkilstaskswitcher/

toe

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 21

Here's another one: iSwitcher is an autohotkey script that:

filters through a list of open windows as you type—with a semi-transparent dialog accessible by simply pressing the Caps Lock key.

enter image description here

More info at Lifehacker

outsideblasts

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 6 297

Windows Task Manager may actually be what you want. Invoke it (e.g., by Ctrl+Shift+Esc), go to the “Applications” tab (if you aren’t there already), select the task you want to go to (click or cursor down or type the first letter of its name), and press Enter or click on “Switch To” or double-click on the task name.

Another answer is Win+n; it will go to the nth task on the taskbar. If you want a certain combination (e.g., Win+5) to always go to a certain program, you should pin it to the taskbar. (If the task has multiple windows, hold Win while you press n repeatedly, and it will cycle through the windows.)

Scott

Posted 2009-10-10T07:49:52.907

Reputation: 17 653