Listary for Windows

Instant access to your favorite files, folders, and programs is totally easy in Windows: just place a shortcut on the desktop, right? Soon you can't see your wallpaper for the shortcuts. Create folders, that'll do it! We're stopping you before you click again and directing you to Listary, a free tool that manages access to your stuff, including recently viewed items, your configured favorites, and common features and commands. With many ways to access its useful features, including hot keys, mouse middle-clicks, and pop-up menus, you can jump from one entry to another, even deeply nested directories, without clicking through to destinations.

Most of the time, Listary works in the background, but we could access the program by right- or left-clicking its system-tray icon or double-clicking any blank area of the desktop, or by pressing Win+W to open its search toolbar in the lower-right corner. Listary's various menus access many other features, depending on which you select, including recently accessed items, favorites, our disks, the Smart Menu, and Help and About files. The Smart Menu contains copy, explore, and view commands, Command Prompt access, and just about anything else we wanted to add to it via the Smart Commands tab on the Options sheet, the closest thing Listary has to a conventional user interface. Here we could set General options such as startup behavior; configure our Favorites, Recent, Applications, and Smart Commands features; set keyboard, mouse, and display options; and select programs we wanted Listary to be compatible with, such as 7-Zip, WinRar, and FileZilla. Listary automatically lists currently open and recently opened files and folders, though we could disable its tracking for any application from the tracking button on the Listary toolbar. We found this compact toolbar especially useful since we could call it up quickly to search through Listary's holding, open the Smart Menu, and manage the favorites or tracking status or settings for any currently open item.

Listary is unobtrusive but unusually useful, which is ideal in file management software. It offers more than we could describe, such as Total Commander integration, various language options, and the capability to configure a default file manager other than Explorer.