Flow Launcher

I LOVE & cannot live without Flow Launcher on my system. It a super-powered Keyboard "App Launcher" that does So So So So So So much more! Its made the windows start menu completely obsolete. Its based on Wox launcher (which I haven't used) and Powertoys Run, which I did use BUT Flow has so many more bells & whistles, its far superior.

At the top of my praise it has works with Dopus and Everything out of the box. Flawlessly! and it customizable to the 9thº.

I was just looking at their website checking if there were any updates and I noticed their main animated.gif showing off the launcher in action has a Directory Opus on the taskbar! :heart:

Its has so many plugins, features and customizations I wouldn't know what to highlight first...

A quick one, I manually copied all of my DO Alaises into their Favtories Plugin, matched the / key so these are available everywhere by launching Flow with Alt+Space ←-- that was the only hotkey I had to remapped in DO, the command intelli-sense, I had to change that to Ctrl+Space because I use Flow constantly! if /downloads or /dl is already open, it's brought to the front.

it's a simple text file set up like this... It also accepts Variables e.g. %APPDATA%\GPSoftware\Directory Opus\Buttons & %USERPROFILE% , etc

PF = C:\Program Files
PF86 = C:\Program Files (x86)
PFLocal = C:\Users\CLOUDEN\AppData\Local\Programs
PFUser = C:\Users\CLOUDEN\PF User
music = M:\MUSIC\_MUSIC

any way, ramble ramble, check it out. You'll be glad you did after you never have to see an advertainment on the windows start button again!!!

context menu options via keyboard...

lost? check the cheat sheet...

integrate with office apps (and the window index)

run a game...

instant calculator

web browser bookmarks...

search and toggle windows servies

quickly kill misbehaving apps

search both sets of window settings from one place!

and sssooo much more ...

this is hotkey cheat sheet... they're mostly all changeable

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I wonder if the dev is a registered DOpus user and it's in here...

A user, maybe, thou they've never posted here promoting Flow. To which I would gloat, its an awesome tool.

Furthermore the Dopus integration could be more robust. it only makes sure to open folder with DO over explorer. I believe a handful of other file manager are also supported.

It would be amazing if they took the integrations a step further to include our Favorites, Layouts, and Open Locations such as jnllnd has done with Quick Access Popup (aka Folders Popup) working with Directory Opus.

There are over 100 plugins written for Flow. Alas I'm not great coding or I try to do it myself.

I've been praising Flow for a couple years. this YouTuber just release a 24 min rapid fire informational video of Flows best features, settings and plugins!

Flow Launcher - The Windows Search Replacement by Productive Tech

for what's it worth the current version is v2.1.0, I'm still using a older v1.19.5 (Portably). i have it set up on a non-OS Drive between 3 installs of windows in the same machine and it runs flawlessly, identically in each install. i love it. I'm limiting myself out of a few newer plugins BUT v1.19 runs more quickly as v2 does sooo much it can slow down a bit, they had to add delay timer option into the settings.

additionally they also forced\limited gui apis which allowed transparency to force windows new "mica", in 2026 micoSLOP can do better here. this broke my own, and a bunch of other, themes. a minor grip but you can make your own .xml themes if so inclined. you can grab the older version from its gitub

So, again, check out flow launcher and never look at the start menu again.

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