// Launcher
ViPad
A Launchpad for Windows.
ViPad is what happens when you spend too long on a Mac and decide you want Launchpad back on your Windows machine. It's a fullscreen-ish launcher: tabs of icons, drag-and-drop arrangement, keyword search, big icons (up to 256×256 if you really want).
The idea is everything you launch — apps, websites, documents, folders — lives in one tabbed grid. Tabs hold categories ("Work", "Games", whatever). If a tab fills up, ViPad paginates. Type to filter. Click to launch.
What it does
- Tabs with categorised icons — apps, files, links, folders.
- Auto-pagination when a tab gets too full.
- Live keyword search that filters as you type.
- Adjustable icon sizes from small to absurd (up to 256×256).
- Touch / finger-gesture support — swipe between pages on a touchscreen.
- Optional "stick to desktop" mode if you want it always-on.
%appdata%\ViPad\settings.xmlexposes everything for power-users who want to edit by hand.
Where it stands
Last shipped: 2.0.0.17 (March 2023). The "open-source-desktop-launcher" build is the current one — same app, just renamed when the source went public.
VB6 codebase at github.com/lee-soft/ViPad. .NET port not started yet.
Some places ViPad turned up
"It helps you in organizing all your shortcuts easily and efficiently." — AskVG
"During testing, we marked the Hide Desktop and Stick to Desktop options in the settings and maximized the application to full-screen mode, and simply put it looked awesome." — AddictiveTips