Launchy, why and how to use it effectively.

A lot of people spend too much time with their hand on the mouse when navigating their computer. Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to improve your speed, and I recommend using them at least in Word, Excel and Powerpoint and in Gmail. But what about opening files on your own computer? Windows’ own system to access files is slow and clunky. I’ve started using Launchy a while ago and it would be hard to go back now that I’ve gotten used to it. When searching for files it’s amazingly fast and pleasant to use. You hit your shortcut to open up Launchy, type the first few letters of the file you’re looking for, and hit enter. Definitely a lot faster than opening Explorer and navigating through all your folders. This efficiency drive is inspired by books like the excellent 4-Hour Work Week and software like Rescuetime (also see my guide to Rescuetime).

Using Launchy on Windows

Download and install Launchy. It’s free but the authors appreciate a small contribution, which is worth every penny. (v. 2.5.0 was used for this guide)
Add folders for Launchy to index. It will only find files in these folders. I added my Dropbox, filetype *.*, excluding executables, but including directories. This will let me quickly open directories of projects instead of only files.
Select a hotkey to open Launchy with. I use the key to the left of ’1′, also known as the ` (easier than the alt-space default)
close the settings and open up your Launchy window with your shortcut. Hit F5 to index all your folders and apply the new settings.

I used to recommend Weby to quickly search your email, contacts, wikipedia, google, and whatever site can take a search query, but it's been a little temperamental in my hands. Many people have gotten it to work though, so I recommend doing a little Google research to get it to work as you want. In my case turning 'Runny' off helped somewhat, but it's still not perfect. I now prefer to use Autohotkey, which is a post for another day.

Here’s a few resources for using Launchy, Weby, and other useful things to do with Launchy. Enjoy!

http://lifehacker.com/5835770/the-best-application-launcher-for-windows

http://lifehacker.com/284127/take-launchy-beyond-application-launching

http://lifehacker.com/338141/add-any-web-search-to-launchy-20

http://www.jonwinstanley.com/2009/11/use-launchy-to-improve-productivity/

Also see:

KeePass, why and how to use it effectively

Rescuetime, why and how to use it effectively