Pinpoint is a free keystroke launcher for Windows 10 with web search, notes, dictionary. Here it serves as a decent alternative to macOS Spotlight and you can use it to find files, applications on PC and do much more. It is an extensible software and with plugins, you can make it search on web, define words, access clipboard history, control Spotify and do much more.
There are some other program launchers we have covered such as but Pinpoint is much better than all of them. Right now, it has some very exciting set of plugins and in the later updates there will be more. Also, the plugins can be disabled if you don’t have any use for them. The entire project is open source, and you can check out its source code on GitHub.
Pinpoint works in the same way as Spotlight or Alfred. If you have used macOS, then you will know what I am talking about here. Pinpoint sits in the system tray and will bring its query box once you hit a keyboard shortcut. There are some advanced things in this software as well such as OCR and text snippets support.
Free Keystroke Launcher for Windows 10 with Web Search, Notes, Dictionary
You can download Pinpoint from here. For now, it required .Net Core 3.1.15 to be installed on your PC so install that from here but in the later versions, you will not be required to do it.
Now, just double-click on the EXE file, and you will see its icon in the system tray. Right click on it to see the different options that it has.
To bring the query box, use the Alt+Space keyboard shortcut and then start searching what you want. Search for apps and programs, and it will instantly bring up the results.
It has a set of plugins already installed. Just find them in the software settings and then enable or disable them as per your needs. Also, you can opt to assign a different hotkey for the activation of the query box.
There is a specific syntax to use the different features of this tool which are added by the different plugins. For example, to see the real-time ticker prices through Yahoo Finance, you just enter the query like this: $GME
To look up weather forecasts, enter the query like this: weather location
To quickly go through top Reddit posts of a subreddit:
Use Pinpoint as a calculator. Just enter the mathematical expression.
It supports DuckDuckGo Bangs, so you can search for something on Google. Just type the query as shown, and it will launch the default browser to show you the results.
These are just a few plugins are included in it right now. For the full list of plugins and their usage, you just go to the GitHub page and see them for yourself. And in the later updates, you might see a plugin to fetch new incoming mails from Gmail and more.
Final words:
If you are a Windows 10 user and looking for a keystroke launcher then no doubt, Pinpoint is one of the best. I liked the way it works and its activation and search is almost instant, so that’s a good thing. But the main highlights of the tool is plugin support. If you are a developer then you can create your own plugin as well.
