Cluttered Desktop…? Try Launchy

I don’t know about anyone else, but my desktop is too cluttered.  At home and work I have dual monitors and I always seem to have too many icons on each desktop.  Often I think I have created a shortcut to a program and spend a minute or two looking for the icon before finally giving up and searching the start menu.

Apparently, I am not the only person in the world with this problem.  Josh Karlin has created a free, open source, keystroke launcher for Windows called Launchy.  This little program is amazing.  After you download the software, the program automatically indexes your programs and allows you to launch them without locating the icon.  Most of the time, Launchy locates all programs without any help, but you may have to tell the program to search in certain locations or have it look in subdirectories to find all your programs.

Anyway, once it has indexed your programs, all you have to do is press “Alt” and “Space” and Launchy opens.  You start typing the name of the program you want and once you see the full name, simply hit enter.  The program automatically opens.

This many not seem to groundbreaking, but I was able to delete about two dozen icons from my desktop computer and I have deleted all the icons on my laptop.  The program is so efficient, you will not even notice it running in the background.

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Tagged as: desktop computer, dual monitors, free open source, gtd, Josh Karlin, launchy, lifehack, start menu