Sysadmins love it! Yes, you can popup the QAP menu over the Windows Console (CMD command line utility) and the newer PowerShell application. The console emulator ConEmu is also supported. Ans, since v11, the Windows app Windows Terminal is supported as well.
To change folder in these applications, click the Middle Mouse Button over the CMD or PowerShell window (or activate the CMD/PowerShell window and hit Windows + W) and select a folder in your popup menu. The folder will be sent to the target window with the appropriate command to change folder in CMD or PowerShell.
Users of international Windows versions who had issues with accentuated characters not being sent properly to the CMD window, this issue has been solved since v8.7.
Quick Access Popup gives you full control on how you close your computer or your screen. With the new QAP Feature Close Computer Control Center, you can Power down, Shutdown, Restart your computer or simply Logoff. You can tell Windows to forced the selected command if required (if you really require it, because this can cause loss of data).
You can also Sleep or Hibernate your computer with two options: Sleep immediately (which may cause data loss) and Disable wake events which prevents some events (like alerts) to wake up you computer when you do not want it.
Finally, you can simply Turn monitor off, Put monitor in low-power mode or Start screen saver.
The Close Computer Control Center feature is available in the QAP Features tree view under the category Windows Features. In addition, other individual QAP Features are available under the Close Computer Commands subcategory: Restart computer, Logoff user, Sleep computer, Hibernate computer, Turn monitor off, Put monitor in low-power mode and Start screen saver.
The QAP Feature Close All Windows displays a dialog box listing all the windows of applications running on your PC. In this list you can select the windows to close. Use the Select/Deselect all buttons or select the check boxes individually. Then click Close selected windows to proceed.
You can double-click (or press Enter) on one window to see more info about its application and close this app individually.
To add this QAP Feature, select the menu Favorite, Add, choose the favorite type QAP Feature and select the feature Close all windows under the section Window Management.
The QAP Feature Window Always on top will turn any window to be the top-most window even if another normal window should cover part or all of it. If the window already has the Always on Top property enabled, the QAP feature will toggle it it to OFF.
To use this feature, you must add it to your menu, add a QAP Feature favorite and select the item under the Window Management category.
QAP can read the current Windows folders custom icons and even set new custom icons to Windows folders .
When you create a favorite folder, if the folder already has a custom icon (configured in the hidden system file desktop.ini), this icon will automatically be associated to your new favorite and shown in your QAP menu.
If the folder has no icon, you can use the Add/Edit favorite dialog box link Set Windows folder icon to change the icon in the folder’s desktop.ini files to the image selected for your favorite. That way, your QAP menu and your Windows file system will show the same icons for your favorite folders. QAP can also Remove Windows folder icon if you want to revert your changes.
The Recent folders and Recent files menus list the recent places or documents memorized by Windows. An option in the Menu tab of the Options window determines the number of items displayed in these menus (default is 10).
Quick Access Popup Recent folders and Recent files are taken from the Windows virtual folder Recent items (C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent or, using the appdata variable, %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent).
This Windows system folder lists the files and folders recently accessed by the user. The Recent Folders menu includes only folder items from this list and the Recent Files includes the rest of it.
Windows is also using this list to populate the Recent Places virtual folder found in Explorer left pane. Recent items are also used to populate the Microsoft applications Jump Lists.
The Frequent folders, Frequent files, Recent folders and Recent Files menus under the In the works menu are populated by scanning periodically the Recent items Windows system folder. Since QAP v9.2, these items are collected in the QAP database allowing to calculate the frequency and determine the order of items in the Frequent items menus. This also improves performance when refreshing Recent items and Frequent items menus.
If, for privacy or any other reason, you want to remove the content of the Recent and Frequent items menus, you need to delete this content from the database:
In the Options window, under the More tab, click the Quick Access Popup Database button.
At the bottom of the Quick Access Popup Database dialog box, click the Flush Frequent Items from database button. This will delete all items from the database.
After you restart QAP, the Frequent and Recent items menus will be empty. If you keep the database enabled, these menus will be repopulated as new contents from the Windows recent items will be added, starting at the time of the last collection.
If you disable the Quick Access Popup Database (by unchecking the first check box in this dialog box), the QAP Recent folders and Recent files menus are populated by reading directly the Windows Recent items menus. To remove these items from the QAP menus, you need to reset the Windows special folder by following these instructions:
Open this folder: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
or use this shortcut: %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
Select all items in this folder and delete them.
The Recent Folders and Recent Files menus in Quick Access Popup are now empty.
Yes. Quick Access Popup menu can include favorites from network drives using UNC locations (like \\MyPortablePC\c\SomeFolder\…), a network drive letter (like N:\SomeFolder) and WebDAV locations (like https://sharepoint.server.com/SomeFolder). However, you have to pay attention to some situations that can occur when using network drives with QAP.
Network drives online or offline
In IT environments, corporate servers are normally always online. But in other environments, it can happen that network drives are temporarily offline. For example, if you attach your portable PC drive to your desktop PC, this network resource can be offline if the portable is on the road or just turned off.
When you use folders or files on a network drive, Windows remembers them in its Recent Items system folder. QAP reads this folder to add these resources to its Frequent and Recent menus. When QAP refreshes these menus, it normally accesses the resource’s drive (to check if a file exists or to read a menu icon, for example). If QAP was not protected against offline drives, accessing a network resources when a QAP background task refreshes its menus could cause a long delay before the menu is displayed (see: Why does QAP sometimes look frozen or takes time to show its popup menu?).
Starting with v11.0.7, QAP adds more robust protection against offline drives and add new options in Options, Menus Advanced Options.
If network drives can sometimes be OFFLINE
Keep the checkbox Network drives (“\\” or with drive letters) can sometimes be offlineselected. QAP will avoid actions that could cause unexpected delays when refreshing its menus.
If you use drive letters to attach your network drives, enter the letters of these drives in the Drive letters for network drives text box. For example, enter “NSW” for if drives N:, S: and W: are sometimes offline (in fact, you could also enter “N: S: W:” if you prefer since non-letters characters in this field are ignored). Resources on these drives will be treated as network resources.
Of course, if you try to launch a favorite from a network drive when it is offline, expect a delay (that could be as long as 20-60 seconds) during which QAP will be not responding as it waits for a response from Windows.
USB drives and USB keys assigned to drive letters do *not* cause a delay when QAP refreshes its menu. This is because Windows “knows” rapidly when these resources are unplugged and does not cause a delay when accessed by QAP. For this reason, these drives letters for these USB resources do not need a special treatment and do not have to be considered in this option.
If network drives are always ONLINE
If your network servers are normally always online, uncheck the checkbox Network drives (“\\” or with drive letters) can sometimes be offline (you do not need to specify network drive letters). In this case, QAP will check if files or folders exist before including them in its Recent and Frequent menus, retrieve custom icon folder and display the network drive’s label and free space in the Drives QAP feature (under My QAP Essentials).
Various notes
Password protection
If a network location is password protected, you may need to be logged in manually *before* navigating to it using Quick Access Popup.
HTTP locations
HTTP locations (URL format) will be automatically transformed to network path (UNC format) for compatibility with Windows Explorer. For example, http://abc.server.com/folder/subfolder/My Name.doc will be replaced by \\abc.server.com\folder\subfolder\My%20Name.doc.
Yes. Tech support, sysadmin and other power users love it!
In any file path (folder, document or application), the system environment variables like %appdata%, %public%, %temp% or %userprofile% (etc.) are supported in favorite location (for example: “%appdata%\Microsoft\Templates” will take you to the folder “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates”).
System variables can also be inserted in favorite advanced settings Parameters, Launch with this application and Start in. See What are favorites advanced settings?
You can also enter a location without path. In this case, the file is searched in the PATH environment variable directories or in app paths in the Windows registry. See Can I use relative paths in favorite settings?.
Finally, you can enter environment variables in favorites name. For example, a favorite name could be “Docs of %username%”.
Yes. You can enter path such using the .. (parent directory) and \ (root directory) symbols in favorite locations or advanced settings. Relative paths are “expanded” based on the current QAP working directory (see What’s the QAP working directory?).
In the following table, the relative paths are expanded as if the working directory was “M:\MyTools\QAP\”.
Relative path
Expanded path
..\Editor\MyNotepad.exe
M:\MyTools\Editor\MyNotepad.exe
..\..\setup.ini
M:\setup.ini
\MyTools\MyDocs
M:\MyTools\MyDocs
That way, a user having to run various tools on a host PC can carry a set of apps on a USB drive or key and use Quick Access Popup to easily launch these tools regardless of the drive letter assigned to the USB device by the host system. Combined with the use of system environment variables and special folders to easily access host PC’s system folders and user’s data, this make QAP the perfect tool for tech support users.
Relative paths can be used in favorite locations, advanced settings Parameters, Launch with this application and Start in. It can also be used for icons with the Edit icon resource link in the Menu Options tab of the Add/Edit favorite dialog box.
For favorites of types Application and Document, you can also enter a location without path. In this case, the file is searched in the PATH environment variable directories or in app paths in the Windows registry. In these examples, the folders in the resolved path column are assumed to be in the PATH variable. If you enter a location without a file extension, it is searched with all executable extensions in the PATHEXT variable: .COM; .EXE; .BAT; .CMD; .VBS; etc.
Yes. If QAP is running with administrator permission, all applications it will launch will automatically inherit the admin level. Is it a good idea to launch QAP as Administrator? This could allow the launched applications to do changes on your system without prompting you. From a system security point of view, this may put your system at risk. In other words, you have to know what you are doing.
If QAP is running with normal user privileges, you can launch only some favorite applications with elevated privileges. Check the option Elevate application with administration privileges in the Advanced Settings of the Edit Favorite dialog box. Of course, before launching the application, Windows will display the usual approval dialog box or ask for the admin password.
Yes, starting with QAP v8.7.1. But do you really want to launch QAP as an administrator? Keep in mind that User Account Control (UAC) is there to protect you against yourselves or against hackers. When running Quick Access Popup in Administrator mode, every application launched by QAP inherits administrative privileges. This can result in unexpected consequences when launching programs that may themselves be infected with malicious code. This could allow malicious programs to inherit administrative privileges and to damage, infect or take control of your computer.
Windows User Account Control (UAC) logo
To launch QAP with “elevated UAC privileges”, click the checkbox Run as administrator in the Options window, Launch Advanced Options tab. After saving options with Run as administrator enabled, QAP will offer to reload itself in Admin mode. On the opposite, after saving with this option turned OFF, QAP could not relaunch itself as normal user because the reloaded instance of QAP would inherit admin privileges. Instead, QAP will offer to quit and you will have to relaunch it yourselves.
When launching QAP with administrator privileges, Windows asks for an administrator password if the current user has normal privileges. If user declines elevation (ie: do not enter the admin password), QAP is launched with normal privileges. If user enters the admin password, QAP displays a security alert to remind user about the risks described earlier. Also, the QAP icon in the Notification zone (tray icon) embeds the Windows UAC logo and the “[admin]” tag is added to the application name in Settings window and other dialog boxes when QAP is running as administrator (only if QAP is running as admin because of the “Run as administrator” option, ie: not if user launched QAP as administrator by other means).
Power user who need to run QAP in admin mode and want to skip the security alert can launch QAP with the command-line parameter /AdminSilent (you can use a Windows shortcut to add this parameter).