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PowerToys Run is fantastic as an app launcher. Not quite as good as Alfred on MacOS but then nothing is. There's a bunch of similar apps for Windows (I used to
by NelsonMinar 4y ago
PowerToys Run is fantastic as an app launcher. Not quite as good as Alfred on MacOS but then nothing is. There's a bunch of similar apps for Windows (I used to use Hain) but none ever worked quite right for me, PowerToys Run does though.
FancyZones is awfully nice too for just putting a window somewhere at a reasonable size and location.
As other folks have noted SysInternals is another similar rogue Windows product by Microsoft. Process Explorer from there is indispensible, as is Autoruns.
- erikbye 4y agoWhile I agree with the concept of PowerToys Run, it does not work as intended for me. Tried on multiple systems. The first time I manifest it, using the designated keyboard shortcut, it does not allow me to input any characters. I have to call it twice.
- joaoco 4y agoAlfred is one of those tools you only realise how valuable it is when you don't have it. I use it every day and really struggle without it when on Windows
- V-2 4y agoI quite liked Launchy and I can recommend it. This being said, it's inexplicable to me why this particular feature isn't supported on Windows out of the box. The nearest equivalent (search feature in the Start menu) is pretty bad.
- tbezman 4y agoWishlist feature for PowerToys Run The ability to search for an application and bring those windows into focus. This is my primary way of switching between applications (except for the terminal which I have bound to Ctrl+Shift+Space). It's much easier for my brain to just type the first two letters of the app I want to focus then to remember the state of the app switch history.
- mariusmg 4y agoThis works with Wox + Switcheroo plugin. Here is how it looks in action : https://i.imgur.com/O9ubcEF.png https://i.imgur.com/O9ubcEF.png
- moogly 4y agoThis is "built into" PowerToys Run. In fact, at the beginning that was all it could do. It's now been moved into a bundled plugin named after the original app that was morphed into this: WindowWalker. I don't remember what the special character you have to type to target the plugin is because I made my installation of PowerToys Run use that plugin by default without a prefix and I disabled all the other plugins.
- artimaeis 4y agoAs of the version I have installed (0.58) WindowWalker is included by default in the results of the PowerToys Run results. To target windows specifically the default character is `<`.
- afterburner 4y agoFinally, a replacement for Launchy, down to the easy calculator feature!
- afterburner 4y agoYou know what, never mind, it's weirdly slow (1 to 2 seconds to react, doesn't intercept key shortcut early enough) https://ueli.app/ https://ueli.app/ is way better, and has incredible plugins.
- mariusmg 4y ago>but none ever worked quite right for me Try Wox, it has built-in integration with "Everything".
- sascha_sl 4y agoPowerToys Run is Wox.[1] 1: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run#attribution https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run#attri...
- 1vonzhang 4y agoListary is pretty much the best I've encounter on Windows. Fuzzy search for all applications & files with dynamic ranking of results based on usage habit + possible customization with search engines. When I'm on a laptop of someone else, Listary is the one that I miss so much.
- erikbye 4y agoI don't know why, but anything on Softpedia makes me very skeptical.
- st0le 4y agoFair warning to everyone reading this. Listary is now effectively abandonware.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoThe developer posted this at the end of April Sorry to disappear for almost three years and then reappear in this way. I have so many feelings to share with Listary and especially with you, the users who have always been with Listary for the past few years. [...] In the future, Listary will continue to focus on keeping files/applications at your fingertips and providing you with an extreme user experience. A brand-new vision, a brand-new product, and a brand-new journey. A better Listary, hope you will like it again -- https://discussion.listary.com/t/a-letter-to-listary-users/7280 https://discussion.listary.com/t/a-letter-to-listary-users/7... (which is actually an automated translation of the original Chinese https://discussion.listary.com/t/listary/7237 https://discussion.listary.com/t/listary/7237)
- Liquix 4y agoGNU/Linux users may be interested in rofi [0] or the more spartan dmenu [1] [0] https://github.com/davatorium/rofi https://github.com/davatorium/rofi [1] https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/
- skirmish 4y agoWofi [2] is inspired by rofi but is Wayland native. Works very well for me with Sway. [2] https://hg.sr.ht/~scoopta/wofi https://hg.sr.ht/~scoopta/wofi
- opan 4y agowofi is incredibly slow with large amounts of text. Here bemenu (like dmenu) really shines. Also Wayland native, but supports X11 and ncurses backends too.
- erikbye 4y agodmenu/bemenu is definitely a good choice on Linux, I personally use 'em with i3. But I can see why some people would prefer their launcher to be in the middle of the screen.
- prirai 4y agoWofi for wayland. Among the advanced ones are krunner, ulauncher and sway-fzfify.
- asimpleusecase 4y agoNever heard of Alfred before, just looked it up. Will try it out this week.
- Geezus-42 4y agohttps://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/
- acemarke 4y agoI'd used FindAndRunRobot for many years, but recently got a new laptop and was reviewing my usual list of utils and tools during the setup process. Came across Keypirinha, and it's great! I probably didn't take enough advantage of FARR's configurability before, but the same is true for KP atm - I really just use it for launching apps, not searching files or anything else. But, KP is working great for me so far and I'm happy with having switched to it.
- vort3 4y agoOne of the best things about Keypirinha is plugin support and PackageControl that let's you install new plugging from within Keypirinha itself.
- dendellion 4y agoWow, a closed-source blob which deeply integrates with your operating system. What could go wrong..
- robertwt7 4y agoWhat’s the difference between alfred and spotlight? I always yse spotlight for launcher and app switching and it’s great
- joshstrange 4y agoIn a word, extensibility. If you are only looking to launch apps, do a few math calculations, and maybe search for files then Spotlight probably has you covered. In fact when spotlight stepped up its game I was a little worried Alfred has been Sherlocked [0] or that the developer might stop supporting it but thankfully that's not the case. You can do a number of cool things with Alfred like creating "workflows" to create your own little mini-programs to do various actions. I know that sounds vague but that's because it's so open-ended. For example, I have a workflow for launching different versions+mods for a game I like (Factorio). I play with different sets of mods depending on how I'm feeling and so I have a workflow that I type "Factorio", then select my "Launch Factorio" workflow from the list Alfred provides, then Alfred gives me a list of my mod packs, I select one, and it launches Factorio after symlinking the mods/saves into the right place. That example is super-custom to me but I have other that are more general-use. Like I have one for Zoom that will show me a list of zoom rooms I regularly connect to (Daily Standup, my boss, my coworker, my Bad Movie Night group, etc). At it's core it's a very simple map of "Label" -> "Zoom Link" but it's a really nice QoL improvement over launching the app, selecting the room from my recent rooms, and then clicking "Join". Pretty much anything I find myself doing over and over, I'll create a little workflow to handle it. Even something as simple as running a single command, I've got one that runs DisplayPlacer (and must-have if you have a multi-monitor setup that you connect/disconnect from). Now I could probably wire up DisplayPlace to run automatically when my mac sees a new monitor but I'm fine running it manually. I have another to unmount all external drives, I have one that pings a coworker to ask if they are free to chat, I have one that formats the unix timestamp I drop in, I have one that can convert/format the Timezone on a date or timestamp, the list goest on. Most all of my workflows are really just shelling out to call a script and display the result back to me and I could pop my terminal open, navigate to the right directory, and run the script but it's so much nicer to do it all in Alfred's popup UI. Then you have the other features Alfred provides (some of which can be done with other apps of course). The main ones I use are snippets (text expansion) and clipboard history. Knowing I can always type "clip"+enter and see a list of the last 1000 things I copies has saved me more times than I can count. I encourage you to checkout the full list [1] of what Alfred can do. Also the PowerPack is worth every penny for me, I bought it years ago (Mega Supporter) and would pay full price again without a second thought. [0] https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/ https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co... [1] https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/
- forgotmypw17 4y agoWhen I still used Windows, my favorite app launcher was voidtools Everything
- RachelF 4y agoIt's one of the reasons I stay on Windows. I haven't found a Linux tool that works as well for file indexing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- forgotmypw17 4y agoI've made do with find ~ > ~/index/home.txt ; find / > ~/index/root.txt
- Zardoz84 4y agoSo, you never try any Linux in 20 years ? Linux launchers had better file indexing in any metric before that Windows did it.
- innocenat 4y agoNothing beats Everything. Seriously. When I changed to Linux 6 years ago I have to be more mindful of where I put my files, because on Windows Everything works extremely well. (I am talking about 5M+ files on disk)
- MonaroVXR 4y agoI'm always mindful about where I put my files, whatever the operating system.
- robscallsign 4y agoIt can be hard for Linux fans to admit when anything on Windows is better, but Voidtools's Everything is one. I've used (and still use) most file indexing and search tools in Linux, and Everything is just categorically better. Aside from the search being just straight up faster, the UI being faster, and the setup and configuration being absolutely painless, the killer app of Everything is that because of the way NTFS has a service announcing file changes any new/deleted/modify file is instantly re-indexed, across any disk, whereas inotify in Linux has many, many limitations in that regard. While I've got the conch another thing that Windows does much better than Linux is Remote Desktop access.
- Falkon1313 4y agoWhat does PowerToys Run do that the standard WIN+R run dialog doesn't? Or just hitting the WIN key to get the search dialog? I'm kind of a power user, since the C64 and DOS 3.3 days, and I find that Windows' current built-in stuff always works well for me. Never seen a need for a separate launcher app. Also wonder about that FancyZones. I love how easily Windows makes basic window and desktop management - shortcuts like WIN+[arrow key] or WIN+TAB or CTRL+WIN+[arrow key] that let you move windows around, snap them, tile them, divide the screen between two, switch to another desktop, etc. All those basic functions which if you have MacOS, for some reason you need to buy separate apps just to get that basic functionality. Haven't ever felt a need for a separate app for that either.
- jen729w 4y agoThe thing that Alfred does that the various methods of launching an app don't do is that it switches to an already-running app. If I've got Outlook open I don't want another Outlook open. Why would I want that? I want to go to the version of Outlook that I already have running! This renders a 'launcher' pointless. I only 'launch' Outlook once a day. I've yet to find – and I stopped looking a while back, because I stopped using the OS – a Windows 'application launcher' that does this. If Win+R does this then you've just blown my mind, but I don't think it does. Is this a result of the way that Windows and Mac treat running apps differently? I only ever have one instance of Safari.app running, for example. That isn't the case on Windows, so how would a 'switcher' know which instance to pick?
- bloqs 4y agoYou want to switch to an already running app? Alt tab or win tab doesnt do that?
- jen729w 4y agoIt does, but I want to do it with an Alfred-like switcher. The problem with *-tab is that each application has no fixed place in that space. So on every invocation I have to look, find, switch. Contrast with bringing up Mail using Alfred. The behaviour is always the same, and therefore muscle-memory-learnable: Cmd+space, ma, return. Messages: Cmd+space, me, return. Near-instant for me because I've done it literally thousands of times.
- marticode 4y agoWindows 11 has some features of FancyZones built in (just hover the mouse over the maximize icon of any window and it'll let you pick a layout and location)
- efreak 4y agoIf you're looking for a lightweight, non indexed launcher (ie, needs to be configured with names and paths), I can't recommend SlickRun enough. It uses incredibly few resources, and can display free memory, etc.
- vort3 4y agoMaybe not as lightweight, but I can't imagine myself using windows without Keypirinha anymore.
- ripley12 4y agoThe Sysinternals suite is incredible; acquiring Sysinternals and maintaining the tools is one of the best things the Windows team has ever done. I don't love everything about Windows these days, and I've mostly switched away from it. But Process Explorer and Process Monitor are a lovely reminder that it's still a powerful OS, and tools don't have to be text-first to cater to power users.
- pjmlp 4y agoAmiga, Atari ST and Mac OS pre-OS X were similar in that tools don't have to be text-first to cater to power users.
- NelsonMinar 4y agoBuying Sysinternals is how Mark Russinovich started working at Microsoft, right? He's the CTO of Azure now!
- knighthack 4y agoI use Launchy in Windows, and Ulauncher for Linux. They're both as good and extendable as Alfred.
- fung 4y agoI was also a long time user with Launchy but switched to PowerToys due to it's being inactive for years. There is LaunchyQt [0] but I haven't tried it. [0] https://github.com/samsonwang/LaunchyQt/ https://github.com/samsonwang/LaunchyQt/