Wox vs Enso Portable
When comparing Wox vs Enso Portable, the Slant community recommends Wox for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for Windows?” Wox is ranked 19th while Enso Portable is ranked 50th. The most important reason people chose Wox is:
Addons such as choclatey and Clipboard are some of the more popular ones, but it stands to reason that just about anything will be extensible if someone writes a plugin in order to perform that specific function.
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Pros
Pro Extensible with addons
Addons such as choclatey and Clipboard are some of the more popular ones, but it stands to reason that just about anything will be extensible if someone writes a plugin in order to perform that specific function.
Pro Easily search the web
There is a built in web search function in the Wox launcher that allows users to easily search sites like IMDB or Wikipedia by prefixing their searches with keywords such as "wiki".
Pro Can fully adapt Windows 10 theme and accent color
Pro Run cmd or Powershell commands directly
Pro Really fast
Faster than most other launchers.
Pro Extensible in Python
GChristensen recently upgraded Enso to Python 3.7, a great improvement over the original v2.5. You can write custom Enso commands in Python through its new web interface (or your favorite editor once you know where to put the files.) There's even an install command to pip install any Python package you need from PyPI. The sky's the limit.
Pro Optional quasimode
Letting go of CapsLock just feels faster than hitting enter (sometimes too fast: be sure to disable the reboot command before turning this on!) Even with quasimode enabled, you can make it modal for that command by tapping Alt.
Pro Easily teach the app to open specific apps and sites
There is a learning function to the app that allows the user to teach the app to open specific items by typing "learn as open" and then clicking on the item one wants it to learn to open.
Pro Can go to existing open windows
By using the "go" command users can switch to their already open windows making this a bit of a window navigator as well as a launcher.
Cons
Con Requires additional programs
Like 'find everything' and Python.
Con Many plugins had stopped working
Con Doesn't really prioritize .exe files but whatever it can find first
Con Comes with a reboot command
And a shutdown command too. Installing these is optional, and I recommend that you don't, especially if you use the quasimode. Unless you like losing your work.
Con No message log
According to Raskin's philosophy which inspired Enso, a pop up "dialog" is a bad design. The OK button is a useless input that interrupts your flow. Enso's pop up messages, therefore, are transparent and quickly fade away on their own (like Android Toast messages). Unfortunately, this also means you can easily miss them if you're not paying attention. Raskin's solution was to keep a message log you can refer back to, but Humanized never got around to implementing that for Enso.
Con Usage tends to be slowed by the caps lock
Function of the app relies on the caps lock key being pressed to enter commands, which can slow some people down by having to hold that key down when they are typing commands.