Program Launch with Layer Activation

Simultaneously launch an application when you activate the layer, and give yourself a break with Jesse's swift idea.

If you are like me, you have layers that you only activate when you want to use the program captured to that layer. Rather then going through the two-step process of activating the layer then double-clicking on the shortcut to launch the application, you can edit the layer so its activation will also launch the application automatically.

When a layer is activated, one of the things the filter driver checks for is shortcuts in [COMMONSTARTUP] and [STARTUP], and it executes those shortcuts. Therefore, if you put a shortcut for your application in one of these locations, the application will launch when you activate the layer.

Click to view.

If you need a brief How-to, read on.

• Open the layer editor.
• Find a copy of the shortcut to the application (it will be a .lnk file). Some of the common locations to find these files are listed below:
• Read-only\System\[COMMONDESKTOP]
• Read-only\System\[COMMONPROGRAMS]
• Read-only\System\[COMMONSTARTMENU]
• Read-only\User-specific\USER_TEMPLATE\[DESKTOP]
• Read-only\User-specific\USER_TEMPLATE\[PROGRAMS]
• Read-only\User-specific\USER_TEMPLATE\[STARTMENU]
• Once you have found a shortcut for the program, copy it to one of the following locations:
• Read-only\System\[COMMONSTARTUP]
• Read-only\User-specific\USER_TEMPLATE\[STARTUP]

Note: I recommend Read-only\System\ [COMMONSTARTUP] because the other location will only work if you first reset the layer or also copy the shortcut to the corresponding location for each user under the Writable section.

• Close the layer editor.

The only thing you need to do to see if you have done this correctly is activate the layer.