Pinpoint vs Starling

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.

Starling is a desktop environment with a 2D workspace and an optional 3D city workspace. Its Linux desktop combines a Wayland compositor, window manager, dock, spaces, and nine first-party apps in a session alongside the existing desktop. It runs native Wayland clients and X11 apps, can launch applications installed on the machine, and includes an App Store for installing more. The supported Linux package target is Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on amd64; the desktop can also run through Ubuntu 26.04 on WSL2. Starling’s Windows shell supports Windows 10 and 11 on x64, and its page says Store apps keep working. The shell, apps, build tools, documentation, and host code are open source under Apache 2.0, and the product is free. The Linux session runs without elevated privileges. Starling labels the desktop an early preview and says users should expect rough edges, missing pieces, and bugs. Its Windows preview installer installs per user without administrator privileges, but is unsigned and prompts SmartScreen on first run.