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Comment by jen729w | Hacker News Reader

The thing that Alfred does that the various methods of launching an app don't do is that it switches to an already-running app.

If I've got Outlook open I don't want another Outlook open. Why would I want that? I want to go to the version of Outlook that I already have running! This renders a 'launcher' pointless. I only 'launch' Outlook once a day.

I've yet to find – and I stopped looking a while back, because I stopped using the OS – a Windows 'application launcher' that does this. If Win+R does this then you've just blown my mind, but I don't think it does.

Is this a result of the way that Windows and Mac treat running apps differently? I only ever have one instance of Safari.app running, for example. That isn't the case on Windows, so how would a 'switcher' know which instance to pick?

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PowerToys Run will search for the currently selected tab title on each browser window. If you had ten browser windows open & one of them was on Hacker News, typing Hacker News would allow you to switch to it.

In regards to the parent comment, one improvement of Fancy Zones is with multiple monitor setups of various resolutions & horizontal/portrait modes.

A few more favorites, there is now a pin window to top of screen so you can keep something always on top of other windows. What is extra nice, is if you use multiple virtual desktops, it stays on the virtual desktop. They've also added some nice mute mic & camera keyboard shortcuts.

You want to switch to an already running app? Alt tab or win tab doesnt do that?

It does, but I want to do it with an Alfred-like switcher.

The problem with *-tab is that each application has no fixed place in that space. So on every invocation I have to look, find, switch.

Contrast with bringing up Mail using Alfred. The behaviour is always the same, and therefore muscle-memory-learnable: Cmd+space, ma, return. Messages: Cmd+space, me, return. Near-instant for me because I've done it literally thousands of times.

> The problem with *-tab is that each application has no fixed place in that space.

BTW Win+1 to Win+9 will switch to the first 9 pinned items in taskbar. If there isn’t an available window it will open one. I have Outlook pinned as the 4th item on my taskbar so navigating to it is always Win+4.

I wrote a bash script for this and binded it to some key commands in Linux Mint. Winkey+T will launch a terminal if nothing is open, or cycle through terminals if there are any open. I have other keys for other programs. I'm relatively new to Mac, looks like I need to check out Alfred.

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