Portable Launchy

In a world where the Internet connects the majority of computer users, the PC is still the primary way of going online and storing stuff you find interesting or need. As such, you don’t want to spend a lot of time with offline navigation through an abundance of files, and this is where applications like Portable Launchy come in handy, providing the right means to quickly launch programs.

As the name successfully tricks you into believing, this is the version of Launchy that requires no installation. Apart from the fact that system registries are not altered with, you can easily store it on a removable Flash drive and use on other computers as well.

There’s one thing in particular you need to know. The application only shows the main window when you need it, and stays hidden as a process in the meantime. To bring up the main window, you need to press Alt + Space. Don’t worry, the hotkey can be changed from the settings menu.

Apart from hotkeys, the settings menu provides quite a decent amount of options to manage. The general panel lets you set auto-hide options for the GUI, with fading effects or hotkey trigger, make it hide when focus is lost, permanently display the main window, and more. The interface can also be changed to several others.

Searching for something reveals results as you type. However, you can make the whole process even faster by specifying what folders to include and exclude in the process. This can be done by adding custom directories, choose to include subfolders and executables, as well as the value for search depth.

You might also specify the number of suggestion to be given on results. There’s also an icons slot for quick identification in case the target program is fitted with an intuitive picture. The application is not a regular search engine, but rather specialized in quickly letting you launch programs. It also works for searching online, even on several other engines that Google, with configurable settings.

Taking everything into consideration, we can safely state that Portable Launchy is a practical little utility, not only because of portability, but it can be used to keep your desktop a free space and launching all items of interest in a matter of seconds. It’s almost invisible, only running as process, while results as retrieved in real-time as you type. You won’t regret giving it a try.