LaunchMenu vs Pinpoint

LaunchMenu is a free, open-source launcher that provides utilities called applets through a keyboard-oriented interface. Its menus support recursive fuzzy search, pattern filters, and prioritization of frequently used items. Users can navigate with arrow keys, activate primary actions with Enter, and open context menus with Tab; controls can be customized. Multi-select allows compatible actions to be applied to several items together. Applets include a dictionary, notes, file manager, internet search, calculator, translator, snippets, time tracker, and calendar. Users can adjust applet settings and themes, import or export settings, and manage official or third-party applets. LaunchMenu runs on macOS and Windows. The site identifies Windows as the primary development and test platform, while Mac testing has been less extensive. Linux support is planned and has not yet been worked on. Developers can build applets using TypeScript and React, compile them into LaunchMenu-ready packages, and upload completed applets to npm with the launchmenu-applet keyword. The listed free plan costs nothing.

Pinpoint is a free, open-source keystroke launcher for Windows. Its search features cover apps, bookmarks, and files through the Everything tool; it can also launch URLs and open a command line. The launcher indexes bookmarks in Brave, Chrome, and Firefox, and its Bangs feature uses DuckDuckGo operators to search directly on websites. Clipboard tools include a manager and uploader. Other utilities include a calculator, converters, dictionary, encoder and decoder, and password generator. Pinpoint also offers notes, shortcuts, text manipulation, emoji search, a window switcher, operating system and control panel tools, and process management. Its listed information and media features include finance equity look-ups, Hacker News, weather forecasts, translation, time zone conversion, and a Spotify controller. The controller can play, pause, skip, and search across Spotify sessions associated with the user's account on any device. Pinpoint can query ChatGPT from the desktop with an OpenAI API key. Download it from GitHub as a ZIP release or install it with Chocolatey; Alt+Space opens or closes its query box. Developers can create local plugins using the Pinpoint.Plugin NuGet package.