Switcher is a useful free tool that allows you to switch between open applications more easily than with the Alt-Tab function and Flip 3D (Win+Tab) of Windows Vista. I blogged about Switcher 1.2 some time ago. Now, there is Switcher 2.0 with some cool enhancements.

Since I have been working with two monitors lately, I tend to open even more apps simultaneously than before. My taskbar is then cluttered with so many buttons that I often have to search for quite some time to find the app I want to switch to. Alt-Tab or Flip 3D are not helpful either then.

With Switcher, it is much easier to find an open application since it uses the complete space of all monitors to display miniaturized versions of all windows. This way, you can recognize more details of the windows than in Flip 3D, for example. However, if you open too many windows, then it might be difficult to find the right one even with Switcher 1.2. Version 2.0 has a couple of new features which solve this problem.

Each window has now a magnified label which can display different kinds of information such as the Windows title, the filename of the application or the process name. This is especially useful if you open multiple windows of the same application. For instance, if you are editing several text files, you will find the right window thru their file names easily. You can change the type of the label text in the Windows style menu (see screenshot).

My favorite new feature, however, are these new filters that allow you to narrow down the windows that Switcher displays. For example, you can just start typing the window title and Switcher 2.0 will then show only the windows with the title containing the string you entered. And you know what? You can even search using regular expressions. Okay, that might be going a little too far.

Another very useful thing is this filter which only displays windows of a certain application. After you launched Switcher, you can press CTRL+W to narrow down the windows of the current foreground app. But I find it more useful to use this shortcut even before I launched Switcher with all windows displayed. To do so, you have to set this shortcut to global. That way, whenever you press CTRL+W (or the shortcut of your choice), Switcher will only show all open windows of the application you are currently working with.

If you finally spotted the right window, Switcher 2.0 has another handy new feature that enables you to activate it faster than before. Each miniaturized window can be selected by just pressing its respective number. There are more new features. Check out the Switcher blog for a complete list. Note that Switcher 2.0 is only beta at the moment. When I played with it, it crashed once.

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