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.
The 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.
dmenu/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.
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.
This 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.
Listary 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.
What 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.
The 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?
> What does PowerToys Run do that the standard WIN+R run dialog doesn't? Or just hitting the WIN key to get the search dialog?
It's more reliable and predictable. The standard windows search often prioritizes online searches vs searching through your files. Even when I type in math, sometimes it gives me bing results instead of just solving the math. Especially for subtractions.
Having online searches in the start menu is cool, but I want that 15% of the time I search, Not 80%.
About FancyZones, the nice thing about it is that you can define the zones where Windows will snap the windows to using the WIN+[arrow key] short cut. I'm especially loving this app when using it on my 4K monitor, as this is where the zones really come in handy. I'm pretty much only using FancyZones.
I'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.
I 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.
Alfred 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
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.
I 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.
While 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.
If 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.
Windows 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)
This reminds me of one of my favorite features from the Mac: Quick Look — press space to instantly bring up a big contextual preview window of the selected document in the Finder.
It's easily forgotten now, but in the 95 and 98 eras Microsoft actually bundled a utility called Quick View [1] that added a quick preview to the context menu. It got lost in the XP transition and I have to wonder if they thought that the changes that came along with the IE-ified version of explorer.exe (image thumbnails, document previews in the sidebar) replicated enough of the functionality that it wasn't necessary anymore (they didn't).
I use this all the time. While the preview window is open, you can even use keyboard arrows to move to other files (or just select them with mouse) and the preview gets updated.
Yes! Love this for Windows, there are plugins for it too, similar to the plugins for macOS. Like you, QuickLook is one of my favorite and most-used macOS features and I cannot be on a system without it.
Between this project and PowerToys, the Windows experience is a lot more enjoyable.
PowerToys Run especially (essentially Alfred or QuickSilver for Windows), is much faster and better than standard Win-S searches.
I have remembet that when the preview window is active, if you double click the document it will open in relavent app. It seems to gone at some point. Any idea?
That's if you're using Finder's embedded preview on Columns mode. If you're using Spacebar to preview, there will be a button on the top right corner to open in the relevant app.
Quick look is more than just a preview, it's really a read-only view of the document. You can read entire documents and PDFs, view HTML files rendered, pan through CSVs, etc
Yes, there are plugins for the preview pane and some are built-in. That’s very nice, but I prefer having the ability to hit space to preview because of 15 years of muscle memory doing that with macOS.
I use PowerToys just for the easy key remapping, which I wish was a built-in feature in more keyboards. Works very nicely as a simple alternative to AutoHotKey. My RSI has gotten a lot better by just remapping Caps Lock to Ctrl.
If any PowerToys feature deserves to be added to Windows, it's gotta be the Keyboard Manager.
Key shortcut remapping should absolutely be a base feature of every single OS for accessibility reasons.
Back when I used to use Adobe Fireworks there was a shortcut for flattening the current selection, I believe it was cmd+ctrl+shift+Z and I'm pressing this hundreds of times a week and eventually it gave me RSI.
After this happened I remapped it to cmd+F, luckily the app had the ability to do that but honestly I consider it important enough that the OS should provide it. I know a lot of windows users point to AutoHotKey but it's a horrible janky feeling hack and requires you to write actual scripts.
In macOS at least you can remap any key as well as keyboard shortcut (both globally and per-app) from the built in OS keyboard preferences. The only thing it requires is that the thing you want to change has a "menu item" (so a named thing in the top menu bar in any of the submenus). Hotkey mapping works by simply mapping to any of the texts in those (sub) menus, however deep you want to go. The great thing about it is the developer of the app doesn't need to do anything to allows that, and it essentially only gets broken if an app goes out of its way to be as non-native as possible (i.e. if it doesn't even use the standard libraries that ship with the OS).
This is one thing I love about Wooting keyboards. The Wootility [0] lets you drag and drop keys around your layout to remap them, and save the mappings to the keyboard itself, so the keys will stay mapped even if you move it between systems.
It’s a great feature. It doesn’t always work 100% stable though. Would love to see it put further into the OS somehow. Macos key / modifier remaps are much more stable than powertoys’.
It still doesn’t support app-specific key remappings though (as opposed to app-specific keyboard shortcuts). This issue has been open since 2020, I’m not sure what they are waiting for: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/6756
I use FancyZones as well but I get annoyed that it doesn't seem to preserve custom layouts between reboots. I have to switch to my layouts manually after every reboot. Have you experienced it too? I am curious about whether it is something on my end or not.
Fancy Zones makes my day-to-day so much more convenient. I wish there was an equivalent in Linux that worked as well - I’ve tried a few gnome plugins but always been disappointed.
Probably not exactly what you're looking for but i3 could be worth checking out. It's a tiling window manager with a powerful customization/scripting interface and it has a feature to save and restore window layouts. There's also Sway which is similar but based on Wayland though it does not have the save/restore feature.
Granted they might not be as easy to set up as installing PowerToys on Windows if you have specific expectations. (But it's not rocket science either.)
I'm aware of i3 and I think I've tested it out in the past but had some silly nit to pick about it. Thanks for the reminder - I'll give it another try!
KDE has Windows-style snap-to-halves or quarters by default. If you’re happy with those basic zones, it definitely works well. I don’t know if there’s a way to configure more complex zones.
Ultimately I went with 'Ultrawide Windows' [1], mostly because I like it better than the defaults and at the same time it is still simple to use. The Github page gives an impression of its capabilities and lists the hotkeys, but it is also available via the KDE integrated tools [2]. What I am still missing is a tool to simply define and use custom layouts.
I found that IT at work wouldn't let me install powertoys because they didn't like the Awake feature. Please bundle these in of allow us to install them one by one.
There's environments where you get in trouble for unauthorized USB devices. Of course, you can just have them emulate an allowed VID/PID pair and get away with it, but it will lead to a rules clarification.
Considering how much energy my work laptop burns on a daily basis because of the four(!) different security products, I am curious how Awake is where they draw the line.
I opened the site in a new tab, and when i opened the tab, there was a popup asking me for my first and last name and an email address to sign-up (for something?) + of course a captcha.
I never visited your webpage before, I didn't even get to read the article, why the hell are you asking me to give you my personal data and subcribe to some spammy emails?
Readit News
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.
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.
[0] https://github.com/davatorium/rofi
[1] https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/
[2] https://hg.sr.ht/~scoopta/wofi
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.
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.
https://i.imgur.com/O9ubcEF.png
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.
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?
It's more reliable and predictable. The standard windows search often prioritizes online searches vs searching through your files. Even when I type in math, sometimes it gives me bing results instead of just solving the math. Especially for subtractions.
Having online searches in the start menu is cool, but I want that 15% of the time I search, Not 80%.
> What does PowerToys Run do that the standard WIN+R run dialog doesn't?
-- Autocomplete
-- Search files, settings, services, the registy and more (all of these can be enabled, disabled or assigned to a shortcut e.g. settings is $ for me)
-- Open windows terminal with specific shell
-- Walk open windows, allow you to search currently open applications and browsers
> Or just hitting the WIN key to get the search dialog?
-- Not constantly try and open Bing and/or Edge
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-co...
[1] https://www.alfredapp.com/
[0] https://github.com/samsonwang/LaunchyQt/
Try Wox, it has built-in integration with "Everything".
1: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run#attri...
https://ueli.app/ is way better, and has incredible plugins.
You can bring it to Windows with this useful open source tool: https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_View
- Command-Delete to delete the current file
- Return, type a new name, and return, to rename the current file
In both cases the view will properly update.
Between this project and PowerToys, the Windows experience is a lot more enjoyable.
PowerToys Run especially (essentially Alfred or QuickSilver for Windows), is much faster and better than standard Win-S searches.
https://keypirinha.com/
If any PowerToys feature deserves to be added to Windows, it's gotta be the Keyboard Manager.
Back when I used to use Adobe Fireworks there was a shortcut for flattening the current selection, I believe it was cmd+ctrl+shift+Z and I'm pressing this hundreds of times a week and eventually it gave me RSI.
After this happened I remapped it to cmd+F, luckily the app had the ability to do that but honestly I consider it important enough that the OS should provide it. I know a lot of windows users point to AutoHotKey but it's a horrible janky feeling hack and requires you to write actual scripts.
https://www.ghacks.net/2010/06/06/the-ultimate-guide-to-keyb...
And it should be a global panel for all installed apps..
With a tab for each app-map, and the ability to export/import a settings file.
Deleted Comment
[0] https://next.wooting.io/wootility
In the meantime I’ll stick with AutoHotkey.
But Explorer is something I stopped using more than a decade ago when I encountered TotalCommander - that I cannot do without!!!
The regex-supporting live-preview batch-filenaming utility alone is awesome.
I work so much faster (with the keyboard) than will ever possible in Explorer!
I could write for hours about the greatness of TCM, but as that’s a little off topic here I won’t :-)
Cross-platform, feature packed, constantly updated, Lua-scriptable, supports TC plugins, written in Free Pascal.
https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io
There's an enhanced TC called TC UP with additional utilities:
https://www.tcup.pl/index.php/en/
Granted they might not be as easy to set up as installing PowerToys on Windows if you have specific expectations. (But it's not rocket science either.)
Ultimately I went with 'Ultrawide Windows' [1], mostly because I like it better than the defaults and at the same time it is still simple to use. The Github page gives an impression of its capabilities and lists the hotkeys, but it is also available via the KDE integrated tools [2]. What I am still missing is a tool to simply define and use custom layouts.
[1] https://github.com/lucmos/UltrawideWindows/
[2] https://store.kde.org/p/1276605/
There are plugins (Window Management → KWin Scripts) that add options, I see Tiling, FlexGrid, KWin QuickTile, and several more.
Win+shift plus arrow moves window to each monitor
Three finger swipe on track pad give you open windows as displayed on each desktop, with ability to drag window to whatever desktop.
I keep three desktops, all with a different wallpaper so I know which desktop for what.
All work windows on D1 - research - d2 - and primary app I’m using if needs full screen on d3.
The only problem is forgetting to switch desktop when you switch mental modes…. Like opening a bunch of HN links in your app desktop…
So just redraft them from whatever to wherever.
I’ll check out fancy…
—-
What I also like, is I have two external USB monitors for my laptop..
And I have a diff display layout depending on which of the additional screens I have plugged in. It remembers the location of each.
So when I have just one screen plugged in, the second is to the right.
When both are connnected: it knows that one is right and one is up above.
(disclosure: former Microsoft employee (now at GitHub) who knows the PowerToys team)
I do it when working at home with a digispark that simulates a mouse that moves a tiny bit once in a while.
You could even place the mouse on a moving surface or something.
I think in the office locking a PC is very important but in a WFH situation much less so. Especially in my case where I live alone.
I've had environments where the system was pretty locked down, but had access to VBScript: https://gist.github.com/valdergallo/0e05d9e0c90b7be77458
Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895031 - Sept 2019 (163 comments)
PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890828 - Sept 2019 (126 comments)
PowerToys – Windows system utilities to maximize productivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19845287 - May 2019 (29 comments)
I never visited your webpage before, I didn't even get to read the article, why the hell are you asking me to give you my personal data and subcribe to some spammy emails?