Productivity Tip - Launchy
Posted by Garrett Scott on Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Under: Productivity
Alright folks,
It's been a little slow on the awesome new gizmo, tweak to some browser to make it better front this week so I'm going to make sure you all know about one of my top 5 favorite productivity tools. I bring you Launchy. Launchy is a quick keystroke opening tool. Now don't get turned off by the overly geekdom sound to that description. It is much simpler than it sounds. This light weight tool allows you to open every file, program, bookmark, anything that has an extension attached to the end of its file name. See now doesn't that sound much better. Think of Google desktop search but not as clunky, it works and its not from Google. I use this for everything. I open all of my files with it, I open folders, I open programs everything its just so awesome. Being that I like to keep my files on my computer inside layers and layers of folders for the ultimate in organization it can take some time to get to the actual file I'm looking for. This is where Launchy comes in handy.
On to the more technical how-to: (its open source so it needs some explaining)
After opening the tool with Alt-Space bar (default) just start typing and it will start looking. However, to get the full use out of this tool you need to add your own folders. To do this click the little gears icon in the top right. Go to the Catalog tab and this is where you can start adding files. The start menu is already indexed for you but I would strongly suggest adding my documents and any other folder with documents you use all the time. I also have my desktop indexed because i save things there all the times. Make sure you select the two boxes Include executables and include directories. This will make sure you get everything in the folder. In order to add the different types of extensions click the little plus sign on the left side of the same catalog window right above the two boxes you should have just clicked. The little plus will allow you to add extensions like .doc, .ppt and .xls. Add whatever extensions you have in the folder and then hit rescan.
Voila you have just installed and perfected the ability to open all of your things stuck deep in that computer of yours without have to do the digging.
Enjoy
It's been a little slow on the awesome new gizmo, tweak to some browser to make it better front this week so I'm going to make sure you all know about one of my top 5 favorite productivity tools. I bring you Launchy. Launchy is a quick keystroke opening tool. Now don't get turned off by the overly geekdom sound to that description. It is much simpler than it sounds. This light weight tool allows you to open every file, program, bookmark, anything that has an extension attached to the end of its file name. See now doesn't that sound much better. Think of Google desktop search but not as clunky, it works and its not from Google. I use this for everything. I open all of my files with it, I open folders, I open programs everything its just so awesome. Being that I like to keep my files on my computer inside layers and layers of folders for the ultimate in organization it can take some time to get to the actual file I'm looking for. This is where Launchy comes in handy.
On to the more technical how-to: (its open source so it needs some explaining)
After opening the tool with Alt-Space bar (default) just start typing and it will start looking. However, to get the full use out of this tool you need to add your own folders. To do this click the little gears icon in the top right. Go to the Catalog tab and this is where you can start adding files. The start menu is already indexed for you but I would strongly suggest adding my documents and any other folder with documents you use all the time. I also have my desktop indexed because i save things there all the times. Make sure you select the two boxes Include executables and include directories. This will make sure you get everything in the folder. In order to add the different types of extensions click the little plus sign on the left side of the same catalog window right above the two boxes you should have just clicked. The little plus will allow you to add extensions like .doc, .ppt and .xls. Add whatever extensions you have in the folder and then hit rescan.
Voila you have just installed and perfected the ability to open all of your things stuck deep in that computer of yours without have to do the digging.
Enjoy
In : Productivity
Tags: productivity open-source
My name is Garrett Scott and I have a tremendous passion for all things internet related. I am an online marketing guy who loves the worlds of Social Media and Social Media Marketing with a whole lot of SEM rolled in.
