Flow Launcher

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Fixed blur theme backdrop, corner, and margin handling.

• Fixed canceled Program queries from caching empty results.

• Fixed a System.OverflowException in CustomScrollViewerEx mouse wheel handling.

• Fixed Program plugin .lnk shortcuts to show full descriptions and command-line options when longer than 260 characters.

• Fixed default browser detection for newer Windows versions while remaining compatible with older ones.

• Updated translations.

• Improved thumbnail and icon loading with smarter fallbacks.

• Improved image hashing to produce consistent results across image formats and DPI settings.

• Improved progress bar animation logic.

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@4yinn, @benello, @DavidGBrett, @LumiaGG, @monerofglory and everyone who has joined discussions, added translations, created plugins, reviewed pull requests, put through their ideas or reported bugs.

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Improved sound effect handling and fixed the application name in the volume mixer.

• Fixed the incorrect Pinyin search default option.

• Fixed a rare Alt+Tab case where the settings window stayed minimized when switched to.

• Improved Chinese character rendering.

• Improved the ranking of user folders in the Explorer plugin for higher placement.

• Fixed a rare Plugins Manager crash.

• Fixed Quick Access Link files not displaying their custom names in search results.

• Fixed a rare case where the settings window remained minimized when re-opened.

• Fixed a crash from editing a disabled Explorer plugin action keyword.

• Fixed a ReportWindow crash that occurred when the log directory was empty or missing.

• Improved the code quality for theme handling.

• Fixed relative path support for Python and Node.js executables.

• Fixed incorrect highlight matching when Everything is used.

• Updated translations.

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@DavidGBrett, @Jack251970, @JohnTheGr8, @VictoriousRaptor and everyone who has joined discussions, added translations, created plugins, reviewed pull requests, put through their ideas or reported bugs.

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Fixed a crash caused by an "Unable to cast object of type" error.

• Resolved a rare crash occurring when the progress bar animation failed to load completely.

• Fixed an issue where Explorer plugin's Quick Access results were missing from general search results.

• Updated translations

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@Jack251970 and everyone who has joined discussions, added translations, created plugins, reviewed pull requests, put through their ideas or reported bugs.

Release notes

Theming

We have moved to a new UI framework, themes with namespaces pointing to http://schemas.modernwpf.com/2019 will no longer work. Please update your themes by following the steps in this PR comment

Features

• Added a new option to show the taskbar when the search window opens.

• New action keywords for searching only folders or files in the Explorer plugin.

• Added an option to skip confirmation for power actions in the Sys plugin.

• Added a new setting to disable the thousands separator in the Calculator plugin.

• Added a max suggestion limit option to Search Query Autocomplete in the Web Search plugin.

• Web Search plugin search sources can now be moved up and down via drag and drop.

• New option in the URL plugin to always open URLs via HTTPS when the protocol is not specified.

• Added support for displaying .url file icons.

• New setting in the URL plugin to use a separate web browser profile for private mode and to manage window/tab behavior.

• Improved Flow's startup speed.

• Moved to a better-maintained UI Framework.

Bug fixes

• Fixed incomplete plugin directory deletion on uninstall.

• Fixed an issue in the Explorer plugin where the Shell Path selection dialog opened in the wrong location.

• Fixed search localization for the Program plugin.

• Fixed an issue where the Custom Query Hotkey did not work when in a result's context menu.

• Fixed a bug where the preview description was ignored when used to display text at the bottom of the preview panel.

• Fixed incorrect text highlighting when using pinyin queries.

• Fixed a bug that prevented the hide program function from working in the Program plugin.

• Fixed issues with Dialogue Jump and made its handling of dialogue windows more robust.

• Fixed issues and improved the search window's logic for handling user-typed queries.

• Fixed an issue where using a logon startup task to start Flow caused the process to be set to low priority by default.

• Updated missing translations.

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@01Dri, @AWAS666, @dcog989, @Heck-R, @Jack251970, @Jaysum57, @nilvanlopes, @onesounds, @sstream17, @umutKaracelebi, @VictoriousRaptor and everyone who has joined discussions, added translations, created plugins, reviewed pull requests, put through their ideas or reported bugs.

A big thank you to @Calapine for sponsoring us! ❤️

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Added handling of the DWM composition errors

• Fixed an issue where the Program plugin did not finish indexing on startup if the 'Open Flow Launcher' hotkey was constantly pressed

• Fixed an issue with the Explorer plugin showing unrelated results while traversing a directory path

• Fixed an issue causing Dialog Jump to not work when in the root directory

• Updated translations

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@01Dri, @90gq29, @Jack251970

A big thank you to @benello for sponsoring us! ❤️

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where Flow's settings were not saved if the computer's shutdown or restart was initiated via the Sys plugin

• Fixed an issue causing Flow's animation sound effect to be missing after using Modern Standby sleep mode

• Fixed an issue with the Web Search plugin that could cause an ArgumentOutOfRangeException error when editing search sources in the settings

• Fixed a crash when opening a URL to a non-existent local file

• Fixed an issue where Flow was incorrectly determined to still be in portable mode after switching to installed mode in certain usage scenarios

• Updated translations

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@dcog989, @Jack251970

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Fixed missing Everything sort options in the plugin settings

• Fixed an issue where constantly changing language via settings could cause high memory

• Fixed an issue where the Appearance tab in settings would keep a wallpaper file locked and never release it

• Fixed issues with the Calculator plugin's handling of decimal separators and functions with multiple arguments

• Fixed text wrapping for the JsonRPC plugin's settings panels

• Optimised Program plugin's indexing lock logic

• Changed the log message for plugins manifest fetch failure to be more user-friendly

• Added handling of empty or corrupted favicons for Browser Bookmarks plugin

• Added missing translatable default strings for Default Browser and File Explorer in settings

• Fixed an issue where clearing the cache twice via settings will cause an error in the logs

• Translations updated

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@dcog989, @Jack251970

Release notes

Highlights

Dialog Jump

• Use Alt+G to quickly jump the Open/Save As dialog window path to the path of the active file manager.
• Search for a file/folder and quickly jump to its path in the Open/Save As dialog window. This is enabled via settings 'General' section.

Automatic Plugin Update Check

• A new option to enable automatic checking for plugin updates.
• A new update dialog will allow for selective plugin updating.

Release Notes Window

• A release notes window will be available when a new update arrives, allowing you to check the release notes directly from the app. You can also access this window from the "About" section in settings.

Double Pinyin Search

• When the "Search with Pinyin" option is enabled via settings, a new option for Double Pinyin search will also be available.

Previous Windows Versions

From this release onward, Flow will only be compatible with Windows 10, 11, and future versions. This is because the newer libraries and frameworks we plan to adopt are no longer compatible with older versions of Windows. Only v1.20.x will remain compatible with Windows 7 and above.

New & Updated Plugins

New and updated plugins will no longer be available for versions of flow prior to v2.0.0. This is because the default plugins have been upgraded to .NET 9, making them incompatible with older versions.

Features

• Added the ability to rename the Explorer plugin's Quick Access Links.

• Improved image icon loading performance.

• Web Search plugin can now set private mode for its queries.

• Added a new language: Srpski (Cyrillic).

• The Calculator plugin now works with either a comma or a dot as its thousands separator.

• Added a delete confirmation when deleting Quick Access Links and paths excluded from Windows Index search.

• The Sys plugin now displays all usable commands when its action keyword is triggered without a search query.

• Added an API function for plugins to determine whether the flow is currently using a dark theme.

• Added an API function for plugins to be invoked when the theme is changed.

• Added the ability for plugins to set their own query suggestion text via Result.QuerySuggestionText.

• The Program plugin now displays all programs when its action keyword is triggered without a search query.

• The Calculator plugin now supports using hexadecimal numbers.

• Added a new date and time format options: "dd MMMM yyyy" & "yyyy-MM-dd".

• Improved the UI for adding Quick Access Links.

• Improved the UI for adding action keywords.

• Added a new API function to show a message with custom buttons.

• Added a new option in the Explorer plugin to display a file or folder's size and age in the plugin result's tooltip.

• Added a new date format in the Explorer plugin's Preview Panel settings.

• Added folder information in the preview panel for folder results in the Explorer plugin.

• Added a new option to show the search window at topmost.

• Added ability for plugin to set a minimum required flow version. This is done via the plugin manifest by setting a "MinimumAppVersion" property.

• Updated to .NET 9.

Bug fixes

• Fixed some minor issues with the Explorer plugin's preview panel.

• Fixed an issue that caused a pop-up error message after opening a file's containing folder.

• Fixed a possible recursive image loading issue.

• Fixed a property binding issue in the Web Search plugin.

• Fixed an issue with mouse hovering on items in the "Plugins" section of settings.

• Corrected typos in the Calculator plugin's translation strings.

• Added a warning message to notify that the preview panel requires a minimum height to properly render content, maximum number of results set below this height may not take effect.

• Stopped a customized preview panel from being created when the preview is turned off.

• Fixed an issue that caused the flow to crash when the error report window's URL was invalid.

• Fixed missing translations and UI issues for some message boxes.

• Fixed an issue with the Browser Bookmark plugin that caused a random high CPU load.

• Fixed an incorrect Quick Access Link type display.

• Updated translations

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@01Dri, @dcog989, @Jack251970, @onesounds, @PatrikHed, @stefanroelofs, @taooceros, @TBM13, @VictoriousRaptor, @WayneFerdon, @Yusyuriv, @zoltanvi

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Fix an issue where UWP changes are not monitored

• Fix an issue where the result selection hotkeys on the Home Page results not updated when visibility/modifier key is changed

• Fix an issue where Home Page not updated when language changes

• Fix an issue causing flow to crash when pasting into the search window

• Updated translations

• Fix an issue where the Plugin project's NuGet package does not have documentation generated

• Fix an issue causing incorrect Plugin version comparison

• Fix some minor UI issues with settings window

• Fix Explorer plugin's preview margin

• Pre-releases now include the associated PR in the release note

• Fix Shell plugin's cmd command parsing error

• Plugins Manager plugin can now be removed without impacting Plugin Store

• Fix culture info issue for plugins that use WinForm

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@Deigue, @Jack251970, @onesounds, @OrigamiDev-Pete, @VictoriousRaptor and everyone who has joined discussions, added translations, created plugins, reviewed pull requests, put through their ideas or reported bugs.

Release notes

Bug fixes

• Fixed the Browser Bookmark plugin taking a long time to load due to favicons. An option has been added to enable or disable favicons; after this release, favicons will be set to off by default. You can turn them on again via the plugin settings.

• Fixed an issue with the missing PendingLineStyle key in custom themes, which caused flow to error on startup.

• Fixed an unhandled external plugin exception that caused flow to crash after typing a search query.

• Fixed an issue with the Program plugin displaying a pop-up dialog when unable to resolve LNK shortcuts.

• Fixed button width not adjusting to text in plugin settings.

• Fixed minor issues found in the settings window UI.

• Added additional missing media types for display in the Preview window.

• Fixed an issue causing settings to fail to save.

• Fixed Explorer plugin settings panel display issue when scaling is greater than 125%.

• Added support for loading MSIX Firefox bookmarks.

• Fixed an index out of range error when loading Firefox bookmarks.

• Fixed an issue with running commands in pswh.exe.

• Added handling for when Everything installation fails and notifies the user.

• Fixed an issue causing the Web Search plugin to crash from certain URI paths.

• Added handling for plugin download exceptions from incorrect URLs.

• Fixed an issue with Web Search incorrectly opening URI file paths.

• Updated translations.

• Fixed issues related to search window maximization and Snap behaviors.

Contributions

We would like to directly mention and thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution and support in this release.

@Jack251970, @onesounds, @stefanroelofs, @VictoriousRaptor and everyone who has joined discussions, added translations, created plugins, reviewed pull requests, put through their ideas or reported bugs.