Launchy Tutorial: Launch Microsoft Store Apps and System Apps using Launchy

hello everyone in this tutorial I am going to tell you how to launch Microsoft Store apps using Launchy. So after you start using launchy sooner or later you will notice that you cannot find and thus cannot launch any app installed via Microsoft Store. For example, I have my Microsoft Store open here and as you can see I have some apps installed on my PC. So, for example Photoscape X or Ditto clipboard or Windows terminal preview etcetera etcetera. So, if you try to launch any of those apps using launchy, for example photoscape X, it doesn’t give you anything… or Windows terminal… nothing or… Ditto nothing.

The same thing happens in case of some of the pre- installed apps 01:08 - that comes with Windows 10 for example Camera or like Photos or even Microsoft’s beloved Edge. So, again if you try to open Edge… nothing or photos or camera. So I’m going to tell you how to correct this problem in a step-by-step manner so you just follow my instructions and very soon you will be able to launch any app using launchy. Launchy finds the programs it shows using some catalogs, you can find the catalogs in its settings for example if you click on launchy and go to the options you will find this catalog and under this you’ll see some of the paths to some folders written here. So what launchy does is when you install it for the first time it automatically creates some of these catalogs based on common locations of shortcut files of those programs. Windows also had such catalogs which it uses to show the start menu.

In 02:41 - fact Windows 10 uses multiple folders to create the Start menu. I’ll show you two most common start menu folders - you can go there by just right-clicking on any of these software shortcuts and using the “Open File Location”; so as you can see it is in this folder under the app data\roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start menu\ and programs. There is another one which you can find by right-clicking some other programs and it is located in the c drive\ program data\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Start menu and programs Launchy uses these folders by default in its own catalog to find and launch the programs; so now you can notice that the folders used by the start menu and launchy are in fact the same; for example here you can find C:\ program data\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Start menu\ this is the same as this path C:\ program data\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Start menu\ programs. So if you can just go up one level this is the location shown here similarly the other location C:\ users\ amber (amber is my profile name)\ app data\ roaming\ Microsoft\ Windows\ and Start menu this is the same as this folder and if you click it you will find this same path written in - just one level up - this is the path written here; in fact launchy uses many other folders like utilities or this app data > quick launch folder to add some more functionalities to it. So if I remove one of these shortcuts from these folders it would also disappear from the Start menu or even from the launchy.

So I’ll show you one like this 7zip file manager is present 05:07 - here and also is shown here if you search Launchy by “7” - 7zip file manager appears if I remove it by just putting it in the Desktop from here - so it is removed from this folder. Now go to the Start menu you will find that there is no 7 zip. Also if you search launchy [clicking sound] by using seven - it shows a 7zip file manager folder but actually there is no 7zip shortcut as was previously shown. So I will just go ahead and restore this 7zip. Now, think backwards - if a shortcut is not present in any of these folders it will also not found in the Start menu or in the launchy. This is exactly what happens with the apps installed via Microsoft Store - they don’t create a shortcut in any of these folders so Launchy cannot find them for example the photoscape X - you cannot find it in here or in any of these subfolders or in this folder either there is no photoscape X.

There is also no camera or photos or Microsoft edge. So this does not appear in launchy but it appears in the start menu. So there must be some holder used by the Start menu that is not cataloged in launchy. We need to find that folder and add that into the launcher catalog that is all you need to do we can find this folder using a class identifier or CLSID. A really handy list of class identifiers can be found in the tenforums dot com website.

07:26 - So I will just go to the Firefox [clicking sound] whoa the defender has blocked this page - BitDefender is now blocking Google huh - okay okay so as you can see here all these lists of class identifiers and there is this “Applications” and corresponding to it this is the class identifier for the application if you want to read more about Class identifiers you can go to the link below in the description of this video; for now I will just copy this and go to my File Explorer - click on the address bar and put windows directory % back slash explorer.exe space shell followed by triple colon and then I will just paste by control-v click enter and it will open this folder containing all these applications and as you can see there is Camera and there is Ditto and Photoscape; you can also find it m…n…o…p Photoscape and all those things like Photos Microsoft Edge everything you will find in this folder Let’s minimize the other folders; ok so this is the folder where you find all these things; so all you need to do is to just copy its path and paste it in the Launchy catalog - right? Well, it’s not that easy if you try to go here and copy the path to this folder it will not give you a true path just some “application” stuff and if you try to go to properties and from there if you try to find the path there is no “Properties” option. So we have to do another trick. I’ll just create a nice little list view here and you find all these camera all these stuff and notice one thing that this Microsoft Store apps have this “Long Display Name” written at their sides; so you can just gather them in one place by clicking this “long display name” so that those apps that don’t have a long display name are separated from those that have the long display name; like this camera connect and all these stuff; now I will select all these apps > right click and “Create shortcut” - it says the windows cannot create a shortcut here; do you want to… do you want the shortcut to be placed on the desktop instead - of course I actually wanted to place the shortcuts in the desktop so I’ll go and click yes and again paste all these shortcuts in the desktop.

Now you just 11:04 - have to cut these shortcuts and paste them in a convenient folder wherever you want; I will do this by going to my C Drive; I have a folder named “Software and tools” here and I will just create a subfolder named; anything maybe like “don’t delete”; I open this folder selected all these shortcuts and just cut and paste them here now it’s very easy you just go to Launchy go to the options click this plus sign… “software and tools” and then “don’t delete” select this folder click OK; it will appear here and then you just have to add a *.lnk to identify the link files and also select this “include executable” because all those are executable shortcuts click OK; then you have to refresh or update the catalog by clicking the “Rebuild catalog”. Now if you open Launchy and search camera you can find camera here if you search photoscape yeah it is present or for that matter photo or Edge or anything. So basically this was the method by which you can correct this problem in the Launchy.

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