Windows equivalent to Butler or QuickSilver on OS X?

February 26, 2005 10:36 PM

Is there a launching tool for Windows with capabilities similar to Butler or QuickSilver on OS X? I've tried tons of different launcher tools on Windows, but haven't found any that match the power of either of these. Ideally, this tool would periodically index start menu items, and provide a command line window to enter launch commands (with partial/abbreviation matching). Thanks!
posted by arathorn to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Tried AppRocket?
posted by kindall at 11:19 PM on February 26, 2005

Wow, that things pretty much a direct rip of LaunchBar. Heh. On the other hand, I've been looking for something like this on Windows for a while, so thanks for a) asking and b) answering. :)
posted by socratic at 10:15 AM on February 27, 2005

ActiveWords
posted by ajr at 10:54 AM on February 27, 2005

This page lists a few alternatives in the comments.
posted by gd779 at 3:23 PM on February 27, 2005

I tried app rocket after seeing it on del.icio,us... it ate a lot of memory.... and caused start up issues. I uninstalled it, but it does almost exactly what you're looking for. I must say I've never used either of the apps you're looking for replacements of.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 5:57 PM on February 27, 2005

Response by poster: AppRocket looks like it'll do the trick. Not nearly as powerful as Butler/QuickSilver, but it has the basics, and a nice GUI to boot.

(Following the link that gd779 suggested, I tried a couple others that didn't work out: runfast (really a command/alias-based launcher, not auto-indexing) and run++ (crashed, gui didn't look as pretty as AppRocket's).)

Thanks again!
posted by arathorn at 1:46 PM on February 28, 2005