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Jarvis, an Alfred Alternative for Windows
- catalystic 7y agoJust to get feedback on our early stage project, what do folks here think about a similar launcher but for saas apps and on can run on any website? Project: Navigator - https://navigator.bytebeacon.com https://navigator.bytebeacon.com We're still building the backend, but playing with the widget should give you an idea of what the tool can do. It 's not meant to complete with desktop based launchers like the one mentioned in the thread so far.
- thedaemon 7y agoI always had a fondness for Gnome DO, which I believe predates Alfred by a few years. https://do.cooperteam.net/ https://do.cooperteam.net/ Does anyone know the original text based launcher? Quicksilver perhaps?
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- egypturnash 7y agoI was using Launchbar on my OS9 Mac well before Quicksilver existed. It’s still around: https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html Wikipedia’s list of app launchers may be useful in figuring out what the first was, sadly it only has the dates for the latest releases, not initial releases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_desktop_application_launchers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_desktop_applicat...
- andrepd 7y agoSynapse is my go-to choice.
- filmgirlcw 7y agoI think Quicksilver is the one that started the trend that has persisted for the last 16 years or so — and that trend certainly increased with Spotlight’s introduction with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in 2005 — although as mentioned below, LaunchBar predates it by 6 or 7 years. But Quicksilver really introduced (as far as I remember) the UI that most other modern launchers still use, and that Spotlight later “stole” — which is to do the search in the middle of the desktop. LaunchBar is probably the OG, but I think most of what has come since (including LB, which remains excellent), was influenced by Quicksilver in the early aughts.
- kitsunesoba 7y agoYep, I was a big QS fan back in the day but switched to Alfred for its cleaner look and stayed for its crazy speed and stability.
- foolinaround 7y agoHow does this compare with launchy? https://www.launchy.net/ https://www.launchy.net/
- ASalazarMX 7y agoLaunchy is closed source. However reputable the source, I wouldn't install a random closed source app just for searching the Start Menu.
- jeanlucas 7y agoYeah, but an unmaintained open source project have potential to be much more harmful.
- thelazydogsback 7y agojust gave it a try -- looks like it's hard-coded for 640x480 screens or something -- it renders so small I literally cannot read any of the text...
- ComputerGuru 7y agoNot hard-coded for a particular resolution but hard-coded for a particular DPI.
- happypatrik 7y agoNot hard coded for a particular DPI, it just doesn't take DPI into account since I always run with DPI settings set to 100%.
- reactspa 7y agoI use Launchy in "Portable" mode (because my work PC is locked down and I may not install Launchy on it). After some 1) significant amount of config-tweaking, 2) learning curve involving moodiness on Launchy's part, and 3) learning about certain keyboard-shortcuts, it works like a charm. The fact that it's Portable is a HUGE plus to me. I'm going to give Jarvis and Wox Launcher test-drives, if they're available in Portable mode.
- traskjd 7y agoNo commits for about a year, with a readme saying it’s early in dev suggests this project is largely dead. Am I misreading something here?
- happypatrik 7y agoIt's not dead, but it's done in my perspective since it does what I wanted it to do when I created it.
- boublepop 7y agoThen I suggest updating the readme: > Jarvis is currently under development, and all features are not there yet. Both of those statements are false if what you say is true.
- happypatrik 7y agoSure, send a PR.
- craftinator 7y agoI don't think that is a PR worthy issue... That's more of a lazy issue.
- tw04 7y agoJust enable the next-gen search bar for Windows 10 - I've used both and the native tool is far better on the latest versions of Windows 10 (at least in my testing). https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/144856/microsoft-testing-new-macos-spotlight-like-search-ui-windows-10 https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/144856/microsoft-testing-new-...
- anigbrowl 7y agoSomewhat. The other day I typed 'draw', wanting LibreOffice Draw (which is installed), but the top result was (Microsoft) Paint.
- lostmsu 7y agoOn the screenshot it looks just like what you get in start menu, but in a different screen location.
- mrec 7y agoThe article you linked is more than two years old. Is this next-gen search bar still not enabled by default?
- GordonS 7y agoI'm a Windows user 10, and have never even heard of this feature before. The standard search feature in the start menu is atrocious, at least as bad as it was in Vista and 7. I actually stopped using it years ago, because it just.does.not.work. I honestly don't know how such a terrible feature has been allowed to remain in Windows for so long. At least from the linked article, it sounds like this might solve the problem - really keen to try it out!
- WalterSobchak 7y agoWox Launcher[1] is another great alternative. It appears to be more active than Jarvis. [1] https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox
- filmgirlcw 7y agoThere is a fork of sorts [1] that is even more active for Wox. [1]: https://github.com/jjw24/Wox https://github.com/jjw24/Wox
- GordonS 7y agoI couldn't see anything about how the features in the fork compare to upstream - do you know what the major differences are?
- filmgirlcw 7y agoMostly bug fixes and more active development so far.
- phoe-krk 7y agoAlfred is for Mac, Jarvis is for Windows. What similar programs are there for the Linuxfolk?
- spystath 7y agoAlbert, maybe? https://albertlauncher.github.io/ https://albertlauncher.github.io/
- nikki93 7y agoI use dmenu: https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/
- snailmailman 7y agoI use synapse[0], although I'm not sure if it has all the same features. I think it can do things like search the web, but I pretty much only use it to search/launch programs, and occasionally some files. [0] https://launchpad.net/synapse-project https://launchpad.net/synapse-project
- trashcat 7y agoI use Rofi. https://github.com/davatorium/rofi https://github.com/davatorium/rofi
- daehee 7y agoUlauncher: https://ulauncher.io/ https://ulauncher.io/
- pluc 7y agognome-shell
- O_H_E 7y agoKDE's Krunner does a good enough job and is integrated pretty well with the plasma desktop.
- qmmmur 7y agoI much prefer KeyPirinha.
- centur 7y agoI've been looking for similar tools for Windows and found that combination of voidtools' Everything + Wox works nicely for me.
- exhilaration 7y agoJust hit win+s in Windows 10, it's not quite as nice as spotlight on the Mac, but it helps keep your hands on the keyboard if you're transitioning to Windows.
- Meph504 7y agoI have seen so many applications like this, and they seem to miss that the backend of windows search is actually pretty amazing, and has providers for a multitude of file types both binary and text, which allows for full content search and not just file name, title, and description. The truth is too its actually really easy to access programmatically. Instead of them rolling their own indexer, they should use something like elastic which has an on par number of providers for various file types.
- jjoonathan 7y agoIf the backend of Windows Search is amazing, why is the front-end user experience abysmal? The problems just don't seem like front end problems: the search is occasionally slow, it doesn't even reliably find installed programs by their name, and if the result pops up while your next keystroke is underway it will sometimes lose the result even if that keystroke is correct, and somehow finding the result again will require removing more than the single correct keystroke that made your desired result disappear. The mind boggles. I'm not familiar with Windows internals, so I should clarify: I'm talking about the search functionality invoked by typing after pressing the Windows key. If I were an app developer in this space I would not trust my core functionality to anything even remotely associated with the above, and I strongly suspect that the complexity of handling the long tail of functionality you mentioned has something to do with why the windows-key search experience sucks. Certainly the fundamental task is not intractable because Spotlight (Apple's search) has been Good Enough for a while. IIRC it became tolerable around the time SSDs became standard. Windows-key search isn't quite there yet. Until it is, I'll take good execution on the basic 80% of functionality any day.
- Meph504 7y agoThe front end is a mystery to me, windows search backend is a queryable system, it's reliable, impressively fast, and suffers from none of the issues that have plagued not only the win10 search, but windows explorer as well. I've never understood why it's performance has been deemed acceptable. I'm on my phone right now so forgive the random sample, but this gives the gist of its usage. https://stackoverflow.com/a/34340288 https://stackoverflow.com/a/34340288 The only issue I have seen is when the index corrupts, this was more common in win7, and in our research it was often the result from an over aggressive AV jamming up the process. But I've written a number of systems that make use of this, and when comparing other ways to accomplish this sort of in depth search, it's the most reliable and manageable. It does have the caveat that it works best on places indexed by the OS, and adding locations to the indexer via code requires some pinvoke stuff most people aren't comfortable with.
- coding123 7y agoIs this like Google Desktop? (Old product from 2000 era) Does it index word documents?
- newscracker 7y agoKeypirinha, which is also open source, [1] seems to be better maintained. See keypirinha.com for more. [1]: https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha
- hananbo 7y agoI've been using it for a while now great customization! highly recommend
- sombremesa 7y agoThis doesn't seem to have anything remotely similar to powerpack. To give an example, can this help me get passwords out of LastPass into my clipboard in a couple keystrokes? Can it help me change what Spotify song is playing? Can it help me find and kill processes? Alfred can do all that and much much more. If it isn't even in the same ballpark of tools (i.e. something that supports programmable workflows and has a bona fide community building such extensions), don't call it an alternative.
- yumaikas 7y agoIt's not an alfred alternative, but Everything Search, (https://voidtools.com https://voidtools.com) is really nifty.