10 Windows Alternatives to Quicksilver

Wim says on April 3rd, 2007 at 10:31 am

Lunchy has the most potential, especially since it started supporting plugins as of the latest version. I use it in combination with google desktop for file searching.

Russell Heimlich says on April 3rd, 2007 at 11:33 am

I live and die by SlickRun, an absolutely fabulous and light weight launcher. I have the keyboard set to win key + Q.

Taco Oosterkamp says on April 3rd, 2007 at 12:34 pm

You may want to check out Fingertips, too.

http://www.getfingertips.com

John says on April 3rd, 2007 at 3:12 pm

This is nice but anything like this for Linux?? Especially Ubuntu.

mouser says on April 3rd, 2007 at 3:53 pm

Find+Run Robot version 2 (still free), has been packed with tons of new stuff and has been in solid development for months.

If you’d like to try a preview download of it before it goes public, just email me at mouser@donationcoder.com — i’m the author :)

I’m very happy to hear about feature requests as well, so don’t be shy.

Scott says on April 3rd, 2007 at 4:09 pm

Launchy all the way. By far the best of the list.

Unfortunately Quicksilver is still king though by a long shot.

David says on April 3rd, 2007 at 4:14 pm

Are any of these portable, i.e., USB drive?

Martin Plante says on April 3rd, 2007 at 10:36 pm

David: I’m the author of slimKEYS. I did look at this avenue, as I was very interested in the PortableApps project. Would you expect slimKEYS/the launcher app to scan all the target computer’s files, or just files on the USB key?

slimKEYS does work from a USB key, but it requires .NET 2.0 on the host machine.

Craig says on April 4th, 2007 at 12:44 am

David, I understand Colibri has a ‘portable mode’ that will run on a USB stick.

Simon says on April 4th, 2007 at 1:08 am

I miss PhraseExpress on the list which actually puts everything together in the slickest form and it is FREE:

* Autotext/AutoCorrection

* Launch programs or open documents triggered by text shortcuts

* Organizes text snippets

* Networking capabilities with Client/Server architecture

And it has by far the smalles footprint.

Simon

Craig Childs says on April 4th, 2007 at 1:48 am

Thanks Simon!
For Linux users I’ll add these:
Katapult – http://www.kde-apps.org/conten.....tent=33985
Gnome Launch Box – http://developer.imendio.com/p.....launch-box
Deskbar – http://raphael.slinckx.net/deskbar/

Andrea Nagar says on April 5th, 2007 at 3:43 am

I’d suggest you look at Direct Access. It uses abbreviations to expand text and launch applications. You can use it to search the web (Google, Wikipedia, dictionary, imdb…)

The new version supports Windows Vista and has macros and instant search.

Check it out at http://www.nagarsoft.com

Julio Angel Ortiz says on April 12th, 2007 at 8:37 pm

The link to the Google Desktop is the same as Dave’s Quick Search Bar.

Love the site, by the way.

Mike says on April 26th, 2007 at 11:05 am

You’re not listing Keybreeze?! This is the closest application I’ve found to Quicksilver. It has almost as many features and it’s light-weight.

jl says on April 27th, 2007 at 10:54 am

This is a pretty good one too. Free trial and then it costs $20.

One feature that I really like is the ease with which one can switch to open windows (*including* individual tabs within Firefox)… something that most of the other launchers I’ve tried do not easily let one do.

jl says on April 27th, 2007 at 10:55 am

Whoops. Forgot the link. The product is called Enso, and it can be downloaded here:

http://humanized.com/

gluino says on July 31st, 2007 at 4:45 am

The 11th alternative: skylight

Michael Fox says on February 3rd, 2009 at 8:10 pm

In response to the Linux question:

gnome-do is excellent (though not quite quicksilver).
google desktop search is available for linux.

liiac says on March 5th, 2009 at 12:19 am

Thank you so much! Colibri is awesome. Finally I found a Quicksilver alternative on my PC.

WhoAmI says on April 21st, 2009 at 8:05 am

Try http://uzoft.com/vDesk.aspx