This is my first App review. And, for this illustrious honour I have selected an application that may seem an odd choice. I’ve not gone for Notion or ClickUp or Sunsama or any of these big apps. I have gone for a little app, that doesn’t really seem to do a whole lot. But, in terms of my productivity, Flow Launcher has been a massive boost and benefit.
So what is it?
Flow launcher is a search app for Windows. It works a little bit like Spotlight or Alfred on the Mac. You have global shortcut (Alt + space, though this can be changed). Press that hot key and you get a bar come up in the middle of your screen. And this is where the magic happens. You can do so much! And there are numerous plugins that let you do even more. You can search for and launch applications on your computer, by typing the name. You can perform a web search, you can search for files on your computer, or stored in the cloud, search youtube, search your Obsidian notes, add tasks to ToDoist, search GIFs and Emojis and loads loads more. Each of these can be configured to run if you start with specific key combo. For example, if i Start by typing ‘t’ Then anything I type after this gets added to my Todoist inbox. You can also add custom hotkeys for more specific actions. These are global Hotkeys, so press that combo and the flow launcher bar comes up, pre-filled with whatever query you type. Just press enter and it runs the query.
It basically seems to me that most actions that I might want to run, can be completed with Flow Launcher.
This aids my productivity in two big ways. Firstly, it is fast, very fast. So many actions can be performed really quickly and without interrupting me or distracting me. Second, as it covers so much, there is only one global hotkey to remember and from there I can do anything.
And, it’s free and open source!
So this is my review.
Get Flow Launcher. Head over to http://www.flowlauncher.com.
This isn’t really a review is it? Well consider it my productivity tip of the day. Get Flow Launcher. It’s only available on Windows as the Mac has established and built in applications to do this job. But it is a very useful piece of kit.
I want to say thank you to Thomas Frank for showcasing this app in a recent YouTube video. He introduces the app really well and I wouldn’t know about this if not for him, so thank you Thomas.
