StartPad - A Launchpad for Windows
A clean and customizable app launcher for Windows
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StartPad is a lightweight native Windows app launcher inspired by macOS Launchpad. Browse your apps in a visual grid, group them into custom folders, and arrange them with drag and drop. Find apps quickly with search. Open StartPad using customizable hot corners or keyboard shortcuts. Runs in the system tray and is just over 1 MB.
PH · launched Sep 16, 2026 · 1 upvote (top 69%) · 0 views
Niche: application and game launchers · 233 launches, 5 in the last 7 days ▼ -84% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Workflow automation
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Commercial product
- Productivity
- User Experience
- Tech
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 233 launches in application and game launchers →
Could you build this?
Partial A basic UI grid is easy, but integrating deeply with Windows Shell APIs, hot corner hooks, shortcut overrides, and smooth desktop compositing requires low-level Win32/C# expertise.
What it would actually take: Requires WinUI 3 / WPF with C# or C++, consuming low-level Windows APIs (`SetWindowsHookEx`, Shell32, KnownFolders) to reliably enumerate Start Menu entries, parse UWP app manifests, and detect global hotkeys/hot corners without triggering antivirus heuristics or lagging the OS. Specialized Windows desktop development expertise is needed.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 386 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #298 of 387 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 288 days after the earliest competitor.
- ArcPad · ph · 2026-10-10 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.69
- IconPane · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- Launchpad Development · ph · 2026-09-21 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.59
- ModusPad · ph · 2026-09-29 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Liftoff · ph · 2026-10-05 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Launchie 1.6.1 · ph · 2026-09-20 · 104 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- CubbyPad · ph · 2026-10-31 · 63 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- Launchpad · ph · 2026-09-15 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.56
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