PowerToys Run: extensible quick launcher for power users
learn.microsoft.com
learn.microsoft.com
Everything [2] is an indexer that will make finding your local files super fast. If you couple those two, you have a launcher that is able to find all files on your drive very fast (and launch applications of course).
[1] https://github.com/lin-ycv/EverythingPowerToys [2] https://www.voidtools.com/
Then got the idea that you can of course simply disable Windows Search Indexer service, and Windows gracefully accepts that. Sure, a few integrated search methods like in Explorer or Start Menu stop working or as efficiently but Windows will then tell you when, and you just adapt to using Everything instead.
So I did, and it's just SO much more efficient at both keeping the index updated and finding my files thanks to being MFT based rather than walking through the file system.
How grounded in reality are your SSD wear concerns? I feel like most people are overly paranoid and have unfounded FUD about that.
I use my SSD like a loaner (constantly installing new games and downloading new linux ISOs to try out in VMs) and after 2 years of heavy use it had IIRC ~98% life remaining in SMART statistics. I bought another second hand corporate laptop used for 4 years and the SSD SMART reports a remaining life of 97%.
So unless you want to leave your SSD as inheritance to your grandkids, I don't see the point of hypermiling your SSD to increase longevity. It's a wearable part, it's gonna die eventually no matter how much you baby it, so I might as well use it to the max to get my money's worth, otherwise what's the point? It's not like it's gonna increase in value over time the less you use it like Pokémon cards.
I did experience a bug in the first gen Intel SSD that one day it showed up as an 8mb drive, didn't know of the fix for it until well later, and it was so small (64gb) that I just swapped it for a larger/cheaper drive by that time.
I also experienced some issues with another drive I replaced a few months ago, that turned out to be an issue with RAM. Again, swapped the 2tb drive for 4tb as I wanted more storage as well.
Other than these, I haven't worn out a drive yet. I have decade old SSDs from an old home server from 12 years ago currently running in RPi boxes via usb-sata adapters.
Windows start... I don' t even know if search works or file not found. And is way slower.
When the setting is applied the start menu will go back to the old behavior where results appear instantly and always point to your local machine. I'm sure dedicated launchers can do an even better job for deep searches, but personally I've never found myself particularly slowed down by the built-in behavior after disabling that borked web search functionality.
Also want to get going with komorebi (https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi) as I've looked at the Linux tiling window managers for years with envy.
[1] https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi-application-specific-conf...
Consider Ctrl + Space in Windows Explorer. For literal decades, it has been the method for selecting multiple nonsequential files. Now it is the default shortcut for the Peek file preview window. But it doesn't have the title PowerToys or Peek. It's just the filename of whatever gets opened. So now you have two problems: figure out why you can't select multiple files in Explorer like you did last week and last year and ten years ago; and figure out how to disable this mystery preview window so it doesn't keep happening.
Hopefully the first time you discover Peek, you aren't trying to delete a subset of sensitive documents in a shared space without using the mouse. But that's okay; the lead dev states PowerToys is an incubator, and that justifies enabling new features by default, so sensitive files should get previewed using Ctrl + Space without warning! (Only that last part is mine.)
The tools are too opinionated for the amount of productivity they claim to provide. (Yeah, even Quick Accent. I'll stick with my insecure AHK script. At least it only activates when I ask for it.)
The old one was. The new one, not so much.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9-_c1egQ4g the video was actually 7 minutes but a lot of that was me explaining each step
[2]: https://lgug2z.github.io/komorebi/example-configurations.htm...
While the programs from this thread (at least those I'm familiar with) score results by relevancy.
Still is 'pretty good' - I'd say 'above excellent', especially the portable version.
Windows has had one or two that I've seen, but not common, and I don't hear every Windows user swearing by them. Linux has GnomeDo, but I found it lacking, and again I haven't heard people swearing by them. ChromeOS has one I think, but I can't remember the name, and again it doesn't seem popular.
macOS on the other hand has had Quicksilver, Launchbar, Alfred, and Raycast, to name just those that I've personally used, and Spotlight has been built in to macOS for a long time, with a launcher/utility interface for many years. I've also heard many people (at least in techie/knowledge worker circles) using them, and have met strong proponents of all of these options.
Is this difference just down to my lack of knowledge of other platforms, or is there a grain of truth to this? If so, why? What makes macOS conducive to this (is it that these are all built on Spotlight and therefore can exist easily), and do users just demand this more on macOS?
Depends where. Where I live, most IT and development jobs are on windows and globally speaking the picture seems to be the same. Mac dominating SW development work seems mostly a SV/US thing.
That aside, Macs are definitely overrepresented outside of SV/US as well, being from EU myself, I don't think I remember a single office I've visited over the last 10 years in a number of countries that didn't look like an Apple store. Granted India/China alone are populous enough to dictate global statistics.
I guess it depends what type of companies you visit. I'm also from near Germany and zero companies i visited in the last 10 years looked like an Apple store. It was all Windows. If you only go to fancy Berlin/Münch startups I can imagine it's all Apple but that's more of a bubble even nation wide. Statistically Windows still has a majority in most companies.
With the right scripts, it could do anything -- and it was lightning quick!
I always got the impression the reason MacOS has all these different third-party launchers and window managers is because the in-built functionality for keyboard-based navigation is so bad.
On Mac, they’re ’app switchers’. They’ll launch an app, or switch to its running instance if there is one.
I dare say that this reflects the way that the Mac and Windows handle apps and processes. Either way, it makes this sort of thing singularly useless on Windows.
It might be useful to launch Outlook once, in the morning. But after that, launching more instances of Outlook is absurd. I want to switch to Outlook.
I don’t think Windows users really understand how useful these tools are as switchers; just how much faster it is to Cmd-Space, s[afari], return, and have your browser pop to the front. I should time it. If that took me more than about 100ms I’d be stunned, because I’ve done it dozens of times a day for well over a decade.
Edit: timed it. 375ms from the first sound of me pressing the space bar until Safari is on-screen. 200ms of my action, and another 175ms waiting for Safari to appear.
I like having the option to start a new instance (as apps also have the option of handling that, e.g. my text editor opens a new text tab if I launch it while it’s already open) or switching to an open app.
For example, Time Machine, which didn’t really do anything other OSes didn’t, but Apple integrated it into their universal preview system and gave it a nice fun and easy to use interface along with making it easy to setup on install.
In Windows you had to dig into a tab on the rt-click properties menu and the best you could do was find previous versions by date, and I’m still not clear on how you enabled/disabled Previous versions on install.
Of course, Time Machinenis also a great example of how Apple often overemphasizes aesthetics at the cost of actual function, where Time Machine is notorious about being extremely flaky about actually restoring from backup (to be fair, I was among the “lucky” people who’ve only had positive experiences with Time Machine, including a full restore).
Windows+1..6 is a terrible keyboard shortcut as they’re both on the fingers of the left hand.
You’re limited to 9 apps, and good luck to your muscle memory if you ever change one of them.
You’re limited to apps. Alfred will open files, URLs, individual setting pages, it’ll send an email, launch a Terminal at your current file system folder … the list goes on.
I assume that many Windows people have never seen a Mac user using Alfred (or Launchbar or Raycast or whatever). You should. :-)
Windows and Linux users have had to put up with decades of tedious lectures and cheerleading from Apple fans who think their tool is faster/better/sexier than everyone else's, never mind the fact that their UNIX-based OS still doesn't ship in a usable configuration for keyboard-centric users.
Like most developers, I have been forced to use a Mac at work in several jobs, and each time I've faffed about with dozens of "productivity" tools that claim to solve the user interface limitations of the base OS - all of which felt about as rewarding as spending months tweaking custom vim configs - instead of just getting on with the actual job I was paid to do.
If you primarily use a keyboard, but you also need a GUI, Windows just works out of the box. It's not cool, it's not stylish, but it does the job. I have nothing against Mac users who enjoy customizing their systems, but please understand that many Windows power users have been there, done that, and decided that what we get out of the box is good enough for the vast majority of work we need to do on a daily basis.
For me it's not really worth my time to customize a system just to save a few hundred milliseconds in the unusual situation where I am running a completely different suite of applications every day, and I always have more than ten of them open, and I can't use my left hand for some reason, and I want to deep link a scripted shortcut into an app instead of just switching to that app and using a standard shortcut, or whatever. In my job, at least, I spend far longer reading code and thinking about the problem than trying to open a terminal, switch apps or send an email.
I do miss the Windows ~NT/2000 every-word-has-an-underlined-letter-that-you-can-use-with-the-alt-key era. Last time I used Windows (10) that felt like it was going away? Vestiges exist but they’re no longer so obvious?
Because that was/is a tremendously simple and effective way to get around, no doubt.
I use that "text-based finder" approach _everywhere_:
- Telescope in NeoVim (https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim)
- The "Actions" (Cmd-Shift-A) and "Find Anything" (Shift-Shift) shortcuts in IntelliJ
- Alfred on my work macbook
- KRunner on my personal linux laptop (with KDE)
- The `t` shortcut on github to jump to files
- the `!` "bang" shortcuts on DuckDuckGo
I haven't found a good equivalent on Windows, not because they don't exist, but because they're all focused on trying to do everything _but_ launch fast and swap to the application I want...so they wind up taking 4-5 seconds between "hit keyboard shortcut that invokes it" and "start typing", because they're busy indexing the registry or my recycle bin or whatever.
There aren't as many third party launchers for Windows because it already does 99% of what you want it to do, and the remaining 1% are features, not competitors.
My experience on windows in the last decade is limited but every time I used a windows 10 machine, the windows key followed with whatever keyword would act as a launcher. Or am I missing something obvious? Did they remove start menu from win 11?
That was my first thought as well. I haven't really used Windows all that much since Windows 7, but at least then I found the start menu to work a lot better than anything we have in Linux land.
Simply press <Win> and type out what you need, be it some application or a system setting you want to change.
I strongly suspect that 'Run has the feature, but I cannot for the life of me find it.
Beyond that they mostly occupy the same space, with 'Run slightly faster to popup (and by slight I mean measured in mS).