Launching Apps with Apwal

I've just come across this smartphone-style app launcher called apwal; it's a nice addition to my Openbox desktop, never gets in the way, and is really light.

Apwal (available in the Debian repos) appears relative to your mouse pointer when it is launched; I've set one of the media keys on my laptop to launch apwal in my Openbox rc.xml. Apwal disappears three seconds after the mouse cursor leaves its app grid, or if an app is clicked on. It is very customisable and looks very nice with Faenza icons. Use apwal --edit to access the settings (it takes a little while to load the settings window, be patient!)

Customising apwal

You simply enter a command to be launched, choose an icon, and choose where that icon should appear relative to the mouse pointer when apwal is launched. Then click OK, hit your specified keyboard shortcut, and click on an app icon...

Apwal in action

I'm still experimenting with different ways to launch apps, so if you have a nice app-launching program or setup that you use and would like to share, leave it in the comments :)