From Launchy to Raycast: the history of the keystroke launcher (2007 → 2026)
Back in 2007 I recorded a short demo of Launchy — a keystroke application launcher that replaced the Windows Start menu with a few typed letters. That idea (hit a hotkey, type, fuzzy-match, launch) started on the Mac with Quicksilver and LaunchBar, jumped to Windows via Launchy, spread to Linux, then split in two: it grew into productivity platforms like Alfred and Raycast, and it dissolved into the Cmd+K command palette that now lives inside nearly every app. Here's the 19-year arc.