Being a command-line fan, I almost always use Launchy to get there. However, these past few days I have been finding myself double-clicking the “My Computer” icon far too often to get to the same bunch of folders.
The techie in me always tries to find a better way to do repetitive tasks. So today’s post is about using a feature of Launchy that I stumbled across by mistake to make this a bit easier and quicker at the same time.
I have Launchy installed under C:\Program Files\Launchy\. Quite recently I noticed the following interesting folders:
C:\Program Files\Launchy\Utilities
C:\Program Files\Launchy\Utilities\Special Folders
The names implied that these folders had special meaning for Launchy. I also noticed that the “Special Folders” contained shortcuts to most commonly used folders like “My Computer”, “Control Panel”, “My Documents”, etc. I also noticed that this folder was not listed in the list of those Launchy monitors (or “Catalog” in Launchy terms, look under a tab with the same name under Launchy options).
Putting two and two together, I simply created 2-3 links to my other most frequently used folders (For example, “My Downloads”, “My Backups”, etc) as show below.
I then got Launchy to re-catalogue (it’s a Launchy words for re-indexing folders it is monitoring). And gave it a shot and you can see the results for yourself below:
The benefit for me is that I can now get to my commonly required directories in less than 5-7 keystrokes – without the need of a mouse. Hurray!
Now, some Power Tips for fellow Launchy users:
- Change the default hotkey to Win+Space (Alt+Space is already taken by Windows)
- I find it visually very helpful for Launchy to underline text that it matched with my key strokes. An example is in the screen shot above. If you would like to try what that is like, set the option – General Tab >> Suggestions List Box >> Underline matched text (Turn ON).
