Key Launcher

A standard keyboard is fitted with well over a hundred different buttons, not to mention second states which are toggled by the Shift key. You might not use all of them quite that often, so it’s a neat idea to use Key Launcher in order to make them useful to run different programs, games, or web pages.

On launch, the application directly minimizes to the tray area, with no balloon tooltip to let you know it’s there. Interacting with the corresponding icon brings up the main menu, which only takes a few seconds of your time to get you familiar with all it has to offer.

There aren’t any default configurations, but there is a built-in list of predefined commands to assign to your hotkeys in order to quickly launch Control Panel, Calculator, minimize all windows, display properties, adjust volume, or bring up the advanced launcher configurator.

Disappointment starts kicking in pretty soon, more precisely when attempting to add a key to the list. This is because the application doesn’t support combination of buttons, which means you need to discard a specific button on your keyboard, and the application can assign a command to any button, given it’s not already part of a different set of commands.

This isn’t necessarily bad, because configured buttons only trigger assigned commands as long as the application is running. It automatically sets itself to run with Windows, so you have all commands active as soon as you reach the desktop.

On the other hand, it helps you access just about anything, literally at the press of a button. This can include executables, text documents, pictures, audio files, videos, and even web pages which show up in the default browser. The advanced launcher functions in a similar way, allowing you to configure numbers with additional parameters.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that Key Launcher comes with good intentions, but somehow manages to get only half of the job properly done. It’s easy to figure out, and configure, but it could have used at least the possibility to choose between a single button command, or combination of keys.