A Better Alt-Tab Replacement Tool for Windows

alt_tab

Alt-Tab is probably one of the most used keyboard shortcut on Windows - you hold the Alt key down (or the Win key in Vista) and press the Tab key repeatedly to cycle through all the running programs or use the Shift-Tab combination to cycle in reverse direction.

If you like to switch to a particular window, you can either release the Alt key when that window is highlighted in the Alt+Tab loop or click that window’s name /icon with your mouse while in Alt+Tab mode.

However, if you work with multiple windows, the default Alt+Tab behavior can be a bit slow because if you need to select the nth window, you’ll have to press the tab key a minimum of n number of times (or use the mouse).

Bao, who works at Microsoft on XPS, has created a free Alt-Tab replacement utility for Windows that is very likely to appeal to all the keyboard ninjas out there. Called Switcher, you can download and run this utility directly from the desktop without any installation.

With Switcher running in the background, you can hit the Win+~ keyboard shortcut (this can be changed) to run through all the running programs but unlike Alt+Tab, Switcher creates a single of all running windows and assigns numbers to those windows - you can type a number to switch to the corresponding window without having to hit the Tab key multiple times.

But there’s more. Switcher includes an awesome find-as-you-type function so you can easily find the window by simply typing few characters that appear in the title of the window. And all these features will work just fine even if you have multiple monitor setup.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

0

Awards & Titles

Digital Inspiration has won several awards since it's launch in 2004.

Google Developer Expert

Google Developer Expert

Google awarded us the Google Developer Expert award recogizing our work in Google Workspace.

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

Our Gmail tool won the Lifehack of the Year award at ProductHunt Golden Kitty Awards in 2017.

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft awarded us the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title for 5 years in a row.

Google Cloud Champion

Google Cloud Champion

Google awarded us the Champion Innovator title recognizing our technical skill and expertise.

Email Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter to stay up to date.

We will never send any spam emails. Promise.