True Launch Bar

True Launch Bar is a shortcut manager that includes a wide range of options for helping users take full advantage of the Windows features. Although it is not particularly intuitive to set up, the app includes help documentation for novice users.

The program inserts a toolbar between the Start button and quick icons area. Through the context menu you can lock buttons, run apps with administrative privileges, find the target, create ZIP archives, open a file's location in Explorer, troubleshoot compatibility, as well as create new shortcuts, menus, separators, and a shortcut to recently accessed items.

More plugins are available at the developer's website, such as an address book, battery monitor, batch run, and startup manager.

Numerous shortcuts can be sorted in the toolbar by various criteria, such as name, type, in ascending order, or with the folders at the bottom. True Launch Bar supports multiple monitors for displaying the toolbar, along with the word wrapping mode.

You can customize sub-menus when it comes to the layout and overlay image, item arrangement, filters (e.g. file mask to hide/show files), skins (presets or custom) and fonts (for the menu item, caption and title).

It is also possible to set the icon, image, description and text color for any shortcut in the toolbar, manage related links, as well as assign hotkeys for launching apps or opening files/folders.

True Launch Bar includes many other configurable settings. You can create, organize, backup and restore multiple profiles, apply menu animations, customize fonts and context menu entries, disable tips, create workspaces for auto-sensing programs, and more.

The application has minimal impact on system resources, using a low amount of CPU and RAM. It has a good reaction speed and applies modifications swiftly. No errors were shown in our tests, and the tool did not hang or crash. To sum it up, True Launch Bar is an excellent solution to managing a fully customizable toolbar on the Start bar, and it should especially please advanced users.