Launch Programs with Find and Run Robot

I’ve been using the application launcher Launchy for a while now, but recently I have heard about Find and Run Robot (FARR).  I decided to give it a try to see what it was like.  FARR is a free download from DonationCoder.com, which is a great site if you have never heard of it before.  Find and Run Robot is very similar to Launchy.  It will search your determined folders for files that you can launch by typing in the name of the file.

If you are not sure what Launchy is like, I’ll give an example.  If you wanted to open Firefox, you would hit the hotkey, which would be Alt+Space, and type in ‘Firefox’ and press Enter.  Then Firefox would open without any clicking of the mouse.  FARR is very similar, except the hotkey is different, although this can be changed in the options window.  I checked the box to have the hotkey set to Alt+Space because I am used to Launchy.

FARR comes with many skins installed, and it will even download new skins from the program webpage.  There are also many plugins available on the plugin page.  I have yet to install any plugins since all I really use it for is launching programs.  A nice feature that I just noticed is that you can set the transparency of the window.  That makes it look a little nicer.

One thing that I would like to see included is a way to hide the system tray icon.  It’s not too much of a bother, but I already have so many icons in my system tray and I really don’t need another one.  I’m so used to Launchy running quitely in the background.

I’m not quite sure if I’m ready to replace Launchy with FARR yet.  I’ll give it a little more time, and then I’ll make the decision.  So far it does everything that I did with Launchy, and it also seems a little quicker.  I like all of the advanced options too, which Launchy did not have.  I’d definitely give it a try, especially if you have used Launchy before.