Executor, possibly the best application launcher ever

I have seen many application launchers in the past but I haven’t seen anything as powerful and as exhaustive as Executor.

Executor‘s default skin looks a lot like Launchy, another pretty slick and simple application launcher. To launch an application or file or folder just type the first few letters of the application and it will generate a drop down list with matching programs, files, and folders. The notable part is unlike most application launchers which can only search start menu entries or program files, Executor can search the entire hard drive. And it’s reasonably fast.

Another handy feature is the ability to create keyword shortcuts for applications. For example, you can create a keyword “ff” for Firefox so that you just have to type “ff” to launch it.

Executor also has an inbuilt calculator. To perform a calculation precede it with a #, for example #678*45 [enter]. It also has a stop watch, timer and alarm.

The program supports several special commands like typing $M$ minimizes all windows, typing $APPS$ or simply “apps” displays a list of all running applications, $MUTE$ or “mute” mutes the speaker and so on.

Other useful features worth mentioning are:

• Maintains history of run commands
• Supports wildcard search
• Full support for keyboard shortcuts
• Ability to access Windows context menu from within Executor
• Shortcuts to shutdown, hibernate, standby the computer
• Open URLs
• Override default file handling programs. Example: open PDF files in Adobe Reader even though the default PDF program is say Foxit Reader.

Executor has a ridiculous number of features and option, it’s impossible to discuss them all. Just make sure to go through their help files, you might just find the feature you have been looking for.