Launchy

Launchy is a clever little program which allows you to easily start any program on your start menu. You just bring up the Launchy window using a shortcut, and then start typing the first few letters of the program. Before long, Launchy guesses which program you want, and you can just press enter.

In fact, Launchy can do a whole load of other clever things, but to start with, here are some instructions for downloading and installing launchy, how to use it, and how to change its appearance so that it's easy to read.

Just leave a comment if you have any problems.

To download and install Launchy

1. Click this download link: Download Launchy
   
2. A file download dialog opens. Press Save.
3. A Save As dialog opens. Choose somewhere to save the file, like your desktop, and then press Save.
4. At the end of the download, you'll get a download complete dialog. Press Run on this dialog.
5. A security warning dialog opens. Just click Run.
6. The Welcome page of the Launchy Setup Wizard. Click Next, or press ENTER.
7. On the licence agreement page, click the I accept the agreement radio box, and click next or press ENTER.
8. On the Select Destination Location page, just click next or press ENTER.
9. On the remaining pages of the Setup Wizard, the defaults are fine, so you can just press ENTER.
10. The last thing the wizard does is to start launchy, and open a readme file - ignore this if you want.

Using Launchy

• To bring up the Launchy Window, press ALT + SPACE
• Start typing the first few letters of the program you want to run. As you do this launchy predicts the program you want to run and displays its icon and its full name.
• Press ENTER to launch the program
• If at any stage you want to close the launchy window, just press ALT + SPACE or ESC.

Changing the appearance of launchy

By default, Launchy uses small fonts, and is also a bit wide for using with a screen reader. However, you can change this appearance by using a different "skin".

To download a more suitable skin:

1. Click this download link: Download Contrast Skin
2. A File Download dialog opens. Click the Open button.
3. When the file has downloaded, Windows Explorer opens showing the contents of the downloaded file contrast.zip
4. In the task pane on the left hand side of the Window, press Extract all files.
5. An Extraction wizard opens. Click next or press ENTER.
6. The select a destination page opens. In the first edit box, type the following path:
   c:\program files\launchy\skins
   or alternatively, click the Browse button under the edit box, and navigate to this folder in the tree.
7. Click Next at the bottom of the page
8. The Extraction complete page opens. Click Finish, or press ENTER.

Before telling Launchy to use the new skin, log off, and then back on again so that Launchy can find it. Then:

1. Somewhere on the right hand side of the Launchy window, right-click to bring up a shortcut menu, and choose Skins.
   
2. A Skin Chooser dialog opens. Select Contrast from the list, and Click OK.
3. Launchy now has a new skin!