[Software] Launchy

Launchy in action (courtesy of Launchy.net)

Launchy would have to be one of my favorite tools on my Windows machine. For those of you who don't know what it is, it's basically like the search bar in the start menu on a Windows machine or like the "spotlight" on a Mac. In addition to your "My Programs" folder (which is included by default), you can add directories for Launchy to scan which increases the range of files and programs you can open through the program.

Although there are many other programs out there that have similar functions, I personally feel that Launchy has the right amount of functionality and visual appeal.

Now, my reason of writing this today isn't to advertise for Launchy but rather to share some of my experiences with it and some fixes for the problems that I've run into.

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Although Launchy is a wonderful tool to access files and folders quickly without digging through your file browser, it is by no means an indexing program. This was exactly what I used it for when I first got it and although it worked fine at first, as the years went on and the number of the files on my computer grew exponentially, so did Launchy's CPU usage.

Don't get me wrong now; I'm not saying that Launchy will take up your entire CPU. But it can.

To prevent this from happening, the key is to "keep it small." Don't go adding every directory into Launchy's catalog list. Only add the essentials like the files you know you will be accessing often.

The more directories you add to the catalog list, the more work Launchy has to do to index those files and build its list. Of course, this varies with computers. On my laptop, I have no problems with CPU usage since I mainly use it for quick net access and have little to nothing on the hard drive itself. However, on my main desktop, which has years of files accumulated on it, I try to limit what directories Launchy can access.

In addition, Launchy, by default, is set to auto-update your catalog every 10 minutes meaning that Launchy will go in and scan the directories in the catalog list to see if the files inside have changed. Coupling this with a large catalog is generally the reason why people face such horrible CPU utilization with Launchy. To disable this, you can simply un-tick the auto-update button (highlighted below in red).

Doing so will disable the auto-update feature and although you no longer have the luxury of an automatically updating list, you can still make Launchy do a manual catalog rebuild by either pressing the "F5" button or by going into the options and doing so under the "Catalog" tab.

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[Download Launchy]

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