Flow-Launcher / Flow.Launcher

A quick file search and app launcher for Windows with community-made plugins.

Dedicated to making your workflow more seamless. Search everything from applications, files, bookmarks, YouTube, Twitter and more. Flow will continue to evolve, designed to be open and built with the community at heart.

_{Remember to star it, Flow will love you more :)}

Getting Started • Features • Plugins • Hotkeys • Sponsors • Questions/Suggestions • Development • Docs

🚗 Getting Started

Installation

Windows 10+ Installer or Portable Version

Winget

winget install "Flow Launcher"

Scoop

scoop install Flow-Launcher

Chocolatey

choco install Flow-Launcher

When installing for the first time Windows may raise an issue about security due to code not being signed, if you downloaded from this repo then you are good to continue the set up.

Or download the early access version.

🎁 Features

Applications & Files

• Search for apps, files or file contents.
• Supports Everything and Windows Index.

• Supports search using environment variable paths.

Web Searches & URLs

Browser Bookmarks

System Commands

• Provides system related commands. shutdown, lock, settings, etc.
• System command list

Calculator

• Do mathematical calculations and copy the result to clipboard.

Shell Command

• Run batch and PowerShell commands as Administrator or a different user.
• Ctrl+Shift+Enter to Run as Administrator.

Explorer

• Save file or folder locations for quick access.

Windows & Control Panel Settings

• Search for Windows & Control Panel settings.

Dialog Jump

• Search for a file/folder and quickly jump to its path in the Open/Save As dialog window.
• Use Alt+G to quickly jump the Open/Save As dialog window path to the path of the active file manager.

Drag & Drop

• Drag a file/folder to File Explorer, or even Discord.
• Copy/move behavior can be changed via Ctrl or Shift, and the operation is displayed on the mouse cursor.

Priority

• Prioritize the order of each plugin's results.

Preview Panel

• Use F1 to toggle the preview panel.
• Media files will be displayed as large images, otherwise a large icon and full path will be displayed.
• Turn on preview permanently via Settings (Always Preview).
• Use Ctrl++/- and Ctrl+[/] to adjust search window width and height quickly if the preview area is too narrow.

Customizations

• Window size adjustment, animation, and sound
• Color Scheme (aka Dark Mode)

• There are various themes and you also can make your own.

Date & Time Display In Search Window

• Display date and time in search window.

💬 Languages

• Supports languages from Chinese to Italian and more.
• Supports Pinyin (拼音) search.
• Crowdin support for language translations.

Supported languages

• English
• 中文
• 中文（繁体）
• Українська
• Русский
• Français
• 日本語
• Dutch
• Polski
• Dansk
• de, Deutsch
• ko, 한국어
• Srpski
• Српски
• Português
• Português (Brasil)
• Spanish
• es-419, Spanish (Latin America)
• Italiano
• Norsk Bokmål
• Slovenčina
• Türkçe
• čeština
• اللغة العربية
• Tiếng Việt
• עברית

Portable

• Fully portable.
• Type flow user data to open your saved user settings folder. They are located at:
  • If using roaming: %APPDATA%\FlowLauncher
  • If using portable, by default: %localappdata%\FlowLauncher\app-<VersionOfYourFlowLauncher>\UserData
  • Type open log location to open your logs folder, they are saved along with your user settings folder.

🎮 Game Mode

• Pause hotkey activation when you are playing games.
• When in search window use Ctrl+F12 to toggle on/off.
• Type Toggle Game Mode

📦 Plugins

• Support wide range of plugins. Visit here for our plugin portfolio.
• Publish your own plugin to Flow! Create plugins in:

SpotifyPremium

Steam Search

Clipboard+

Home Assistant Commander

Colors

GitHub

Window Walker

......and more!

🛒 Plugin Store

• You can view the full plugin list or quickly install a plugin via the Plugin Store menu inside Settings

• or type pm install/uninstall/update + the plugin name in the search window,

⌨️ Hotkeys

Hotkey	Description
Alt+Space	Open search window (default and configurable)
Enter	Execute
Ctrl+Enter	Open containing folder
Ctrl+Shift+Enter	Run as admin
↑/↓, Shift+Tab/Tab	Previous / Next result
←/→	Back to result / Open Context Menu
Ctrl+O , Shift+Enter	Open Context Menu
Ctrl+Tab	Autocomplete
F1	Toggle Preview Panel (default and configurable)
Esc	Back to results / hide search window
Ctrl+C	Copy folder / file
Ctrl+Shift+C	Copy folder / file path
Ctrl+I	Open Flow's settings
Ctrl+R	Run the current query again (refresh results)
F5	Reload all plugin data
Ctrl+F12	Toggle Game Mode when in search window
Ctrl++,-	Adjust maximum results shown
Ctrl+[,]	Adjust search window width
Ctrl+H	Open search history
Ctrl+Backspace	Back to previous directory
PageUp/PageDown	Previous / Next Page

System Command List

Command	Description
Shutdown	Shutdown computer
Restart	Restart computer
Restart With Advanced Boot Options	Restart the computer with Advanced Boot option for safe and debugging modes
Log Off/Sign Out	Log off
Lock	Lock computer
Sleep	Put computer to sleep
Hibernate	Hibernate computer
Empty Recycle Bin	Empty recycle bin
Open Recycle Bin	Open recycle bin
Exit	Close Flow Launcher
Save Settings	Save all Flow Launcher settings
Restart Flow Launcher	Restart Flow Launcher
Settings	Tweak this app
Reload Plugin Data	Refreshes plugin data with new content
Check For Update	Check for new Flow Launcher update
Open Log Location	Open Flow Launcher's log location
Index Option	Open Windows Search Index window
Flow Launcher Tips	Visit Flow Launcher's documentation for more help and usage tips
Flow Launcher UserData Folder	Open the location where Flow Launcher's settings are stored
Toggle Game Mode	Toggle Game Mode
Set Flow Launcher Theme	Set the Flow Launcher Theme

💁‍♂️ Tips

• More tips

Sponsors

Mentions

• Why I Chose to Support Flow-Launcher - Appwrite
• Softpedia Editor's Pick

❔ Questions/Suggestions

Yes please, let us know in the Q&A section. Join our community on Discord!

Development

Localization

Our project localization is based on Crowdin. If you would like to change them, please go to https://crowdin.com/project/flow-launcher.

WPF UI Library

Our UI library is using iNKORE.UI.WPF.Modern.

New Changes

All changes to Flow are captured via pull requests. Some new changes may have been merged but are still pending release. This means that while a change may not exist in the current release, it may have been accepted and merged into the dev branch and is available as a pre-release download. It is therefore a good idea to search through the open and closed pull requests before you start to make changes to ensure the change you intend to make is not already done.

Each of the pull requests will be marked with a milestone indicating the planned release version for the change.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome, in addition to the main project (C#) there are also documentation (md), website (html/css) and others that can be contributed to. If you are unsure of a change you want to make, let us know in the Discussions, otherwise feel free to submit a pull request.

You will find the main goals of Flow placed under the Projects board, so feel free to contribute on that. If you would like to make small incremental changes, feel free to do so as well.

Get in touch if you would like to join the Flow-Launcher Team and help build this great tool.

Developing/Debugging

• Flow Launcher's target framework is .Net 9

• Install Visual Studio 2022 (v17.12+)

• Install .Net 9 SDK

  • via Visual Studio installer
  • via winget winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.9
  • Manually from here