The Windows 11 Start menu has been the target of plenty of criticism since the operating system made its debut back in 2021, and there are valid reasons for that. Whether it's the fact you can't resize it, the forced Recommended area, and the overall lack of customization, it's not the best experience. So much so that I've rounded up the best Start menu customization in a separate article.

But one of these options really stands out to me, and that's Flow Launcher. As I've become more and more of a keyboard user, having a way to do things without using the mouse is great. So I wanted to test myself, and I forced myself to avoid the Start menu for about a week. That even includes shutting down the PC. And what I've learned so far is that I might actually prefer using my PC this way.

Using the keyboard is so convenient

It's always ready

First things first, let's talk about the core of Flow Launcher. This app is basically a search bar you can use to open and do almost anything on your PC. You can think of it like the Run dialog on steroids, and boy, these are some very effective steroids. Flow Launcher can do a lot out of the box. It can find and launch your programs at a moment's notice, search for your files, and even go through your browser's bookmarks.

Seriously, there's so much here. Launching a program is as easy as typing its name and hitting Enter, but the real power here comes from the plug-ins. You can add more on your own (and we'll get to that), but the included ones are great. Plug-ins essentially allow you to run all kinds of commands that may tie into specific apps or features. For example, typing b before a query searches your browser's bookmarks so you can quickly open a website (and you can customize which browsers to search, too). Typing > before a query lets me run a command line command, and this is basically how I've been using the Windows Package Manager now. It's even faster than having to open Windows Terminal first.

And that's really the big thing here: how fast it all gets done. All you need to do is press the hotkey of your choice (and you can even replace it with the Windows key), and the search bar immediately appears, letting you type in whatever you need. No matter what you're doing, you can bring this up and it just works, and it does it super quickly. It's so much faster to do things this way compared to using the Start menu.

Where I notice this the most is actually when I leave my PC momentarily and want to put it to sleep. Before, I'd rather just press the power button on the computer itself to put it to sleep because the Start menu felt cumbersome. But just bringing up Flow Launcher and typing "sleep" feels much faster and more natural, and it just works. This is also how I shut down my PC now, and it's awesome.

It's not just an app launcher

Extensions add much more power

As I've already mentioned, Flow Launcher comes with some extensions out of the box that let you do things like accessing your browser's bookmarks, running Windows Terminal commands, and even terminate running processes so you can quickly close running apps. Most of these plugins have configuration options, too, and a big one I've found myself resorting to is the Explorer integration. This is what allows Flow Launcher to fetch files for you, but by default it uses the Windows indexer, and it's frankly not great. But that's where Everything comes in. This search tool indexes all your files extremely quickly and makes them searchable, so you can find almost anything you could ever want. It can actually be a bit overwhelming with how many files you might find, but it's much more likely to find anything you need. So I installed Everything and then changed the search indexer in Flow Launcher, and all my files were now much easier to find.

But there are other plugins in the plugin store, too — a lot of them, in fact. One I installed was a unit converter, which is fairly self-explanatory. This is a feature that Windows has built into the search bar and I always miss it when using an alternative, but Flow Launcher has a workaround with these plugins, and it's pretty great.

Another one was Quick Uninstaller, which adds the ability to quickly uninstall any app from your PC, something else that's very handy. You can also add a YouTube integration to quickly search YouTube videos, and pair it with a video downloader to quickly save videos to your PC. There are a lot of plugins for the most random things. Someone made a Pokédex, so I can quickly look up information about a Pokémon if I'm playing a game. There's one plugin that integrates with Home Assistant, though I frankly haven't tried it yet. It's way more than I could ever list, but Flow Launcher is such a powerful app thanks to this ecosystem that's surprisingly robust.

It's not perfect

I've had a couple of issues

My main problems with Flow Launcher have had to do with finding certain things on my PC. The first time I noticed was when looking for the System Restore feature for an article I was working on. This option simply didn't show up in any search results, and the Start menu was the only way I could get to it quickly, otherwise I'd have to navigate the Control Panel.

Also, despite installing Everything, finding specific files can still be a challenge. The default search engine misses a lot of things, but Everything finds too much, so it's hard to get to what I want when so many folders containing program data appear before the folders I actually interact with. Of course, the search suggestions improve and learn from your habits, but it's not a perfect solution. You need to be very precise with the name of the file you want to find, and sometimes the path, too, and at that point, navigating File Explorer might be easier.

Another small issue I had was that I wasn't able to launch ShareX after installing it. Every other app got indexed properly, but for some reason, ShareX would not appear in search results, even after a reboot. This is likely a device-speciifc bug, but the built-in Windows search doesn't give me issues like this for apps installed through the Microsoft Store.

I'm going to keep using Flow Launcher

Despite its flaws, Flow Launcher is one of the best apps I've installed on my PC, and it's definitely keeping its place on it. It's so much easier to launch apps, uninstall them, search YouTube, and so much more with just my keyboard. I'm finding myself liking this a lot more than the Start menu, and I'm curious to see how other plugins might enhance my experience that much more over time.

Is it for everyone? Maybe not. I understand not everyone wants their keyboard to be the primary way they do things on their PCs, but for me, this is fantastic, and I highly recommend everyone try it.