Open Here v1.0

I present a new little tool with very specific purpose: OpenHere

It detects running instances of the Windows File Explorer. From the top-most instance it, fetches the opened path, and any selected files. You can use the command line application to retrieve this information. Or you can use the GUI application, displaying a tool window to select and open one of up to twelve configured tools.

My keyboard has several freely assignable macro keys, which I did not use for years. Simply, because I had no idea what to do with them. Then, Windows 11 came along. One of the maybe most criticized features is the new context menu in the file explorer, hiding away most functions you might or might not want to call on files and folders. That’s when I thought, it would be nice to use the macro keys to trigger something on the selected file, like opening it in Notepad++ or open the whole folder in Visual Studio Code or in Fork or something like that. And that’s what I wrote OpenHere for.

I learned quite a bit about the low level icon handling and loading of large icons, and I got to get more experience working with WPF.