PowerToys Run: extensible quick launcher for power users

If you want to use powertoys run, i highly recommend the plugin for everything here. [1]

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/

The whole PowerToys suite looks useful. I'm trying to find some time to get familiar with it all.

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.

I would rather like to see a file explorer launcher such as Listary [1]. The ability to quickly navigate to files and folders is much more important to me than launching apps.

[1] https://www.listary.com/

I find it interesting that, to my knowledge, launcher/assistant tools like this aren't common on platforms other than macOS.

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?

Isn't the main start menu already a quick launcher?

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?

The one feature that keeps me on KeyPirinha over PowerToys Run is the ability to configure and launch portable apps from specific locations (and subdirectories).

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).

Having tested all launchers which are available on earth I settled with fluentsearch. Most capable launcher of them all and also works with everything(although the internal indexer is also incredible powerful)

It also comes with telemetry that one can’t disable

So, what the start menu search should be, before they added web results (and ads).

So Microsoft just copied Spotlight?