Run a program by name from PowerShell (similarly to the run box)

Question

In Windows we access the Run box with Windows Key + R. Then we can run a program by name (e.g. firefox, snippingtool). Is there a way to run a

Answer 1

As @briantist mentioned in his answer (+1): the "Run" dialog (which probably calls the ShellExecuteEx function) checks the subkeys of the App Paths registry key in addition to the paths in the $env:PATH environment variable.

For emulating the behavior of the "Run" dialog I would, however, add the folders to $env:PATH instead of creating aliases for each executable:

$regkey = 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths'

$appPaths = Get-ChildItem $regkey |
  Get-ItemProperty |
  ? { $_.'(default)' } |
  select -Expand '(default)' |
  Split-Path -Parent |
  % { [Environment]::ExpandEnvironmentVariables($_.TrimStart('"')) } |
  select -Unique

$env:PATH += ';' + ($appPaths -join ';')

By adding this to a PowerShell profile (e.g. your personal profile %UserProfile%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1), the variable $env:PATH of each PowerShell instance you start is updated with the additional paths from the registry. Note, however, that by adding too many folders you might be hitting length restrictions.