Tutorial Thursday
In the past we’ve shown you how to create batch files for synchronizing two folders, and today we’re going to demonstrate how they can be used to launch your favorite applications. If you’re like me you probably start the same applications every morning, such as your feed reader, web browser, and your calendar. If that’s the case then you’ll be in love with what I’m about to show you. In under a minute you can create a batch file to launch several applications, documents, files, and more in a single click.
What some people don’t realize is that you can also use this method to reduce the startup time of your computer! It’s likely that you have at least a handful of applications that startup with Windows which you don’t need immediately. Things like an instant messenger or email checker. You can place all of those applications into a single batch file, remove them from the startup list, and then just run them when you’re ready.
Update: Be sure to checkout how you can use a batch file to close multiple programs as well.
You may think that doing something like this is a tedious process, but it’s actually rather easy:
–Instructions–
- Open Notepad (Start Menu -> Accessories -> Notepad):
- Get the paths for the programs you want to start. The easiest way to do this is to right-click on each of the existing shortcuts, choose the Properties option, and then copy the Target path.
- Enter the paths for each of the programs into Notepad, one per line. Be sure to put
start ""
at the beginning of each line, and put a space after it to separate it from the application path. If the path of your application has a space in it, you’ll need to surround the entire path with quotes. It should look something like this:
- Save it as a .BAT file by manually entering in the extension at the end of the file name.
- Double-click on the new file that you just created to test out the results.
–Examples–
There are all kinds of things that this can be used for, especially since you can throw parameters onto each of the applications. Let’s say you wanted to open our website in Firefox, one of the lines would look like this:
start "" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" "cybernetnews.com"
You can also have it open a document by providing the path to it, like this:
start "" "C:\Users\Wagner\Documents\CyberNet.doc"
In the end you can create several different batch files each for different tasks. Batch files are powerful tools that can greatly enhance your productivity, and this is one of the ways they do that.
Thanks to Tim for asking us how to do something like this!
Now, that helped a lot. Thank You.
A Lot of Batch files are being born on my desktop….
That was really helpful!
I’m always closing tray applications for games, then re-launching them.
This has saved me a lot of regular hassle.
Now, i notice the ‘Start’ there, would i be able to CLOSE the same applications by simply changing ’start’ to ‘close’?
That could save even more time, by cutting out all the expand system tray>RightClick>Close>repeat stuff.
Anyway, great tip, thanks ^_^
Then you should learn windows commands [ss64.com]
This is extremely useful. Thanks for posting this!
BTW: Is there a way to change the icon for this?
Very awesome post – and thanks to kvascola for the other link too. Been playing around with this trying to find good ways to optimize my tedious tasks through the day.
You can’t change bat’s icon (at least I think so).
)
But there’s a nice trick:
- Create the .bat file following the instructions above
- “Hide it”. Put the file on any folder you prefer (C:\Documents and Settings\YourUser\MyShortcuts for example)
- And make a shortcut to the .bat file (yes, a shortcut from a shortcut
You can change the icon of the bat’s shortcut as you will.
Thanks for pointing that out. It’s such a great idea that I might use it for a followup article.
Brunofs went through the only solution that I know of, but it kinda doesn’t seem worth going through the hassle.
Awesome tip man! I will probably use this to launch the browser + music player combo.
Try Stardock’s IconDeveloper. It lets you change icons of specific files of the same type.
Install, then right click the file whose icon you want to change. there will be a icon tab on the right. check “changeth con ifor this file only….
I want to create a bat file to execute opening a webpage then automatically login with my credential with an excel file. Can I do this with .bat or will I need to use java too.
Can anyone please give me some tips.
You definitely won’t be able to do that using only a batch file. That will require interaction with your web browser.
This is the perfect tutorial i have been looking for one for a long time thank you VERY much for posting this!!
~Mike.
There’s also a program that lets you write a text file with each line being either a file, program or web page URL and after you give the text file a .multifire file extension then when you double-click on it everything will be opened. You can download the Multifire software at [sites.google.com]