AppDrawers

A Windows 10 & 11 Utility for displaying shortcuts and capturing clipboard snippets.

When activated, AppDrawers displays a menu listing the contents of a directory containing Windows shortcuts (*.lnk) or Clip files (*.Clip). The menu appears wherever the mouse cursor currently resides. When shortcuts to AppDrawer-configured directories are pinned to the Taskbar, the menu appears above the Taskbar icon.

Installation

The application requires manual copying to a directory for use. There is no install/uninstall process currently defined. In service mode (the default mode when executing the application), a log file is written to the directory the application is configured to start up in. The application will need to be able to create files in that folder.

Shortcut Display

Shortcuts have to be manually created to request directory structures be displayed.

For example, if a user would like to see their desktop shortcuts as a menu on the Taskbar, then a shortcut would need to be created in a folder (such as Documents\AppDrawers). The shortcut should be configured as follows:

Target

"<Install folder>\AppDrawers.exe" "http://localhost:9393/AppDrawers/directory?dir=C:\Users\<userId>\Desktop"

Run

Minimized

Where Install folder is the installation folder selected for AppDrawers.exe.

The shortcut's icon should be personalized, otherwise a generic icon will be displayed.

Finally, the shortcut should be right-clicked, and the menu option "Pin to Taskbar" selected. For Windows 11, this may be in a submenu.

Clipping

AppDrawers supports capturing Clipboard snippets. It saves these as text files with the extension "Clip" in the directory chosen for the Taskbar shortcut. To activate clipping for a directory, clipping=true should be added to the shortcut's URL.

For example, a storage folder would need to be created (such as Documents\AppDrawers\Clips), and a shortcut would need to be created in a folder (such as Documents\AppDrawers). The shortcut should be configured as follows:

Target

"<Install folder>\AppDrawers.exe" "http://localhost:9393/AppDrawers/directory?dir=C:\Users\<userId>\Documents\AppDrawers\Clips&clipping=true"

Run

Minimized

Again, where Install folder is the installation folder selected for AppDrawers.exe.

Also again, the shortcut's icon should be personalized, otherwise a generic icon will be displayed.

The shortcut should be right-clicked and the "Pin to Taskbar" option selected.

Note that when the clipping option is used, the New Shortcut option is replaced with a Capture Clip option.

Troubleshooting

If the application launches, but produces an Access Denied error, the default application port may already be in use. Ensure there are no other applications listening on port 9393. Alternatively, the /port <port> command line option can be supplied to the shortcut that starts the AppDrawers service, and an alternate port chosen.