If you only use a few programs you don’t need a program launcher as you can get by perfectly well with the Windows Start Menu or by using Desktop Shortcuts. Now let’s get real! We are busy, with multiple tasks on the go, and for the trusty PC to really shine as a productivity booster, we need what we want next … fast!

There are many approaches for program launchers. An effective one is to use a keyword based approach where you launch a program by typing in the name (or part of the name) of a program. Launchy is the best known freeware example of this approach, and Keybreeze is free for non-commercial use.

Keybreeze is very fast and provides many configurable options to change how it functions and appears. The list of supported features is impressive, including automatically opening typed websites in a preferred browser as well as quick searches, user defined macros, looking up movie times, notes, reminders, and inserting commonly typed text into programs. It has a smaller memory footprint than Launchy, which is more attractive to the eye and has better indexing of files and folders.